S6:E3 Katie Farris chats with Julie Murphy

The Hive Poetry Collective

The first poem in Katie Farris' new book of poems, Standing in the Forest of Being Alive, ends with the stanza Why write love poetry in a burning world?/ To train myself, in the midst of a burning world/ to offer poems of love to a burning world. This poem, an arrow that sails though each poem in the collection, begins Farris' unflinching look at the details of her own cancer treatment and marriage in the midst of social and political unrest. The poems, intimate and immediate, tackle difficult subjects yet they're full of tenderness and humor. Join host Julie Murphy as she chats with Katie Farris about the poems, poetry and about her journey To train myself to find, in the midst of hell/ what isn't hell. Katie Farris’s most recent book, Standing in the Forest of Being Alive, from Alice James Books (US) and Liverpool University Press (UK), was shortlisted for the 2023 TS Eliot Prize and was listed as Publisher’s Weekly’s Top 10 Poetry Books for 2023. She’s also the author of the hybrid-form text boysgirls (Marick Press, 2011; Tupelo Press 2019), and the co-translator of many works, including A Country in Which Everyone’s Name is Fear, which was one of World Literature Today’s Notable Books of 2022. She’s a Pushcart Prize winner. She graduated with an MFA from Brown University, and is currently Visiting Associate Professor of Poetry at Princeton University.