Abbie Kiefer PRESS AND REVIEWS
Abbie Kiefer PRESS AND REVIEWS
Talking with poets.org about grief, historical memory, and pop culture in Certain Shelter.
THE ACADEMY OF AMERICAN POETS >>
A conversation about poetry that's rooted in domestic spaces and how we can find both mystery and meaning in the quotidian.
Certain Shelter is included on this list of seven debuts. It's a book for anyone who has seen an old mill and felt a sorrow they couldn’t name.
An interview about Certain Shelter with Maine poet and writer Jeri Theriault.
An interview with William Woolfitt about ordering a manuscript and writing oddball poems.
An interview with Nancy Reddy on how having kids gave my creative work a sense of urgency.
WRITE MORE, BE LESS CAREFUL >>
An interview with Bronwen Tate on giving yourself assignments as a way to move forward with a difficult project.
An interview with Khalisa Rae Thompson on emotionally true poems that contain few actual facts.
"The specific seething spareness of the New England said/unsaid lives in Abbie Kiefer’s debut collection of poetry, Certain Shelter. —Nina MacLaughlin
"In her poem, 'My Dentist Detects Occlusal Loss,' Abbie Kiefer writes, 'Oh, I’m tender / towards relics.' And oh yes, she is. Her debut collection, Certain Shelter, is strewn with them in all their forms." —Jefferson Navicky
"Where Kiefer’s poetry derives its ultimate power is the depth of her observations, how she allows the images to speak for themselves." —Mary Ardery
"The power of Certain Shelter lies in its clarity: Kiefer’s clear-eyed speaker, fearless engagement with lyrical and confessional poetry, and sharp use of form." —Tyler Truman Julian
"Abbie Kiefer lives in and writes about New England with voice that is hard-bitten and sardonic and yet deeply tender and lyrical. You get the feeling she would be an equally good companion at a bar, a bowling alley, a doctor’s appointment or a funeral." —David Starkey
"Two intertwined subjects constitute many of the poems in Abbie Kiefer’s collection: the death of the speaker’s mother, and the speaker’s hometown in Maine. Kiefer uses them to deftly illuminate each other, describing place and grief intimately and specifically, and reminding us that nothing ever remains the same." —Elizabeth Galoozis
"Like Kiefer, I want poems to help me bridge my losses—and these poems do. These poems hit hard, but as much out of gentleness as ferocity." —Meghan Sterling
MER: MOTHERHOOD, LITERATURE & ART >>
"Abbie Kiefer’s attention in Certain Shelter is so tender—it’s like when someone is looking at you, and listening, and you see their eyes soften, and you realize they are really, really listening." —Han VanderHart
A conversation with Han VanderHart about praising the minor and the mundane and why work and productivity aren't always the same thing.
A conversation with Mike Sakasegawa on ephemerality, poems about tv shows, and how it feels to be bad at something.
A conversation with Jason Gray on avoiding sentimentality, enacting surprise through line breaks, and rallying for a revival of E. A. Robinson's work.
A recording of 10 poems for a poetry series made possible by Rice Public Library in Kittery, Maine.