Welcome!

This is the website of Katherine Soniat; poet, professor, and editor. She teaches in the University of North Carolina at Asheville's Great Smokies Writers Program and currently lives in Asheville, North Carolina.

The Swing Girl is forthcoming from Louisiana State University Press (2011) and A Raft, A Boat, A Bridge was the runner-up

for The Orphic Prize, and is forthcoming from Dream Horse Press (2012).

Poem of the Week

Check out Katherine's work on the "Poem of the Week" website:

http://www.poemoftheweek.org/id482.html

Katherine wins the 2011 Oscar Arnold Young Award!!

"SONIAT RECIEVES AWARD FOR NORTH CAROLINA'S BEST BOOK OF POETRY"

The Swing Girl was selected as Best Collection of 2011 by a North Carolina poet (Arnold Oscar Young Award) given by the Poetry Council of North Carolina.

"Katherine Soniat, of Asheville, has been named recipient of this year’s Oscar Arnold Young Award for the best book of poetry from North Carolina for her collection entitled The Swing Girl, published by Louisiana State University Press. The award, given annually since 1959 by the Poetry Council of NC, is one of the state’s most prestigious awards for poetry. Soniat is the author of four previous books and has a fifth, A Raft, A Boat, A Bridge, forthcoming from Dream Horse Press later this year..." Read the entire story here: http://poetrycouncilofnc.wordpress.com

New!

The Swing Girl from Katherine Soniat

“Many poets have written of the Mediterranean, but Katherine Soniat gives us poetry that so vividly calls up contemporary and ancient Greece, the hard light, the sea, the god-haunted groves and the graves, we feel as if we are there ourselves." - Kelly Cherry

Visit the Swing Girl page on this site

Visit LSU Press' page on The Swing Girl

New! Readings by Katherine

The schedule of Katherine's live readings is now available below!

1. Hollins University, October 20. Roanoke, Va.

2. Virginia Tech, October 28. Blacksburg, Va.

3. Malaprops Bookstore, Nov. 6. Asheville, NC

4. City Lights Books, Nov. 17. Sylva, NC

5. North Carolina Writers Network Conference. Nov. 19. Asheville, NC

6. Xavier University, Nov. 30. New Orleans, La.

7. Garden District Books, Dec. 1. New Orleans, La.

8. McGehee School Book Fair, Dec. 3. New Orleans, La.

9. The Maple Leaf Bar Reading Series, New Orleans, La.

10. Fly Leaf Bookstore, March 8. Chapel Hill, NC

11. North Carolina Poetry Society Annual Meeting, March 24. Southern Pines, NC

12. North Carolina Poetry Society, April 15th. Charlotte, NC

13. McIntyres Bookstore, Sept. 23, 2012 Pittsboro, NC

14. Quail Ridge Books, Sunday, April 1 at 3:00, in Raleigh NC

Collections of Poetry by Katherine Soniat

To The Good Life

Of feta, green oil, and black olives.
The waves ride high for Ondine

Who thrives on each spumey motion.
Of The residential Moby-Dick Bar

And Breakfast, another anomaly
Rising from the Aegean.

The Swing Girl

TRAVEL

...up through the vines come the big cat. in his mouth a fish swiped
from the corner market stall. he shakes it to get a better grip,
then jumps for the next dark terrace.

For years Sappho toyed with the heart, mostly at night,
always near the water.

The Swing Girl

THE ISLANDS

...the man on a donkey sways by with sticks on the animal's rump.
They've trotted past the cave high in the cliff side. Black hole filled
with the sea's extravagances--bryozoa, crinoids, and corals.

Eons it takes the ocean floor to shift, until one day a next suddenness appears on the horizon. Love is like that once, a brilliance that calls to then darkens the eye.

The Swing Girl

GARDEN SMILES

...I sit under the pines, the doves cooing. Tall shade, clear tea, and about us--the widening rings of xylem and phloem.

On the grass, a baby drinks her bottle and looks my way. Between
sucks, she takes time for a grin, returning my archaic curve
of well-being.