Poet Katie Ford Kicks off Behrend's Creative Writers Reading Series

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When one is the site of so much pain, one must pray

to be abandoned. When abandonment is

that much more — beauty and terror

before every witness and suddenly

you are not there.

That's how Katie Ford closes her poem "Colosseum," also the title of her 2008 book. It's a steady, brilliant piece of poetry, taking turns at times strange and quietly horrific. The beauty and danger of her work continue in Blood Lyrics, her third collection, published in 2014 — a book the Kenyon Review said "speak[s] with startling intimacy about the world and the body, that microcosm of all experience."

Ford will read from Blood Lyrics as the first artist in the 2015-16 Creative Writers Reading Series, produced by Penn State Behrend's B.F.A. in Creative Writing degree program. The event is free and open to the public.

Colosseum was named Publishers Weekly's "Best Book of the Year" for 2008, and the Virginia Quarterly Review named it a "Top 10 Poetry Book of 2008." Ford's poetry has appeared in the New Yorker and the Paris Review, and has earned her the Lannan Literary Fellowship and the Levis Reading Prize. And you get to see her for free. — Sara Toth

6 p.m. (preceded by a 5:30 p.m. reception) // Larry and Kathryn Smith Chapel, Penn State Behrend, 4701 College Dr. // 898.6108 // behrend.psu.edu/readings