KEARNEY – The University of Nebraska at Kearney is hosting a virtual poetry reading featuring Callista Buchen.
Buchen will share her work at 7 p.m. Thursday as part of UNK’s Reynolds Visiting Writers Series. The Zoom event can be accessed at https://bit.ly/3jEzCsx using the password Films!
The winner of DIAGRAM’s annual essay contest and the Lawrence Arts Center’s Langston Hughes Award, Buchen is the author of two chapbooks – “The Bloody Planet” and “Double-Mouthed” – as well as “Look Look Look,” a full-length collection published in October 2019.
Her poetry, written in prose, has appeared in Harpur Palate, Fourteen Hills, Puerto del Sol, Salamander, Whiskey Island Review and many other journals. She also writes frequently with poet Amy Ash.
Brad Modlin, the Reynolds poetry chair in UNK’s Department of English, describes Buchen as “the type of engaging poet and reader who will make you wonder why you haven’t been reading more poetry.”
“In prose paragraphs, her poems stretch our expectations of what poetry should do and our expectations of what a person should do,” Modlin said. “These poems carry on through stress and life changes we did not ask for. Buchen knows that sometimes you just want to steal all the traffic cones and pop your eyeballs into a water glass, which the people in her poems do. They also say the right thing to their daughters and search for quiet moments of self-understanding.”
Buchen holds a Master of Arts from the University of Oregon, Master of Fine Arts from Bowling Green State University and doctorate from the University of Kansas. She’s an assistant professor at Franklin College in Indiana, where she directs the creative writing program, advises the student literary magazine and curates the visiting writers reading series.
