Kita Shantiris, guest poet

KUSP's Poetry Show

Poet Kita Shantiris was the in-studio guest of host Dennis Morton on the Poetry Show for February 7, 2016. Ms. Shantiris will be reading for Poetry Santa Cruz this Tuesday, 7:30 PM, at Bookshop Santa Cruz, along with local poet Doren Robbins.

A psychologist who runs a non-profit mental health center, Kita Shantiris’ new poetry collection is titled What Snakes Want.

From her website:

Advance praise for What Snakes Want

“Something edgy and intense haunts Kita Shantiris’ poems, always threatening to flare up just outside their frames. Like a great auteur, she teases us with implication, with slow builds, the sneaky reveal, with what you can’t yet see. Or, she’ll give us a flash of aftermath, letting us glimpse “a tub of red water” where the violence has already taken place. Carefully orchestrating her pace, Shantiris lets things dawn on us, which contributes to the sense of delicious discovery one has in reading this collection. Wanderlust, an ode to coffee shops, an erotic poem set in a gaudy Laundromat, a child lying in bed hearing her abusive father come home…it’s all here, articulate, compressed, suspenseful. “It takes brandy to center me/glowing alone here.” The reader will likely find herself glowing along with these poems.”

—Amy Gerstler, author of National Book Critics Award winner Bitter Angel and other collections

“One could spend a lifetime with Kita’s new and powerfully personal book of poetry, What Snakes Want. The poems speak of a life replete with love, loss, pain, honesty, insight, longing, sensuality, and a deep unabashed unsentimental appreciation for the very gift of life itself. The poems are accessible yet abound with rich imagery, beautifully wrought observations of the natural world and of our very human behavior, and they do so with an intensity of feeling and care that ultimately resound with hope as they reach in and touch the soul.”

– Ed Harris, actor, screenwriter, director