About Author

Jennifer Keith’s poems have appeared in Sewanee Theological Review, The Nebraska Review, The Free State Review, Fledgling Rag, Unsplendid, Best American Poetry 2015, JMWW, and elsewhere. Keith received the 2014 John Elsberg poetry prize and was a finalist in the 2021 Erskine J. Poetry Prize from Smartish Pace. Her first full-length book of poems, Terminarch, was chosen by David Yezzi for the 2023 Able Muse Book Award.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

When I was a kid, I couldn’t decide which I loved the most: writing, painting, or music. So I got a degree in film, where all three come together, a flame of light rising out of darkness.

Studying the great auteurs trained me to notice moments of life when color, sound, motion, and meaning coalesce into something that chimes, deep and limbic, cracking open a door into those places we always feared and always longed for.

My poems are scenes from those moments in real life, in dreams, and in films I have loved.

Truant Season

“Incandescent poems that thrill with a fierce lyricism and a holy wisdom gained the hard way….” — David Beaudouin, author of On Down the Line (UnCollected Press) forthcoming in 2025.