Karla Kelsey: Suquehanna University: 3/27/06

reposting from the SU website:

SELINSGROVE, (Pa.) – Karla Kelsey, visiting assistant professor of English and creative writing at Susquehanna University, will read from her recently published book, Knowledge, Forms, the Aviary, at 7:30 p.m. Monday, March 27, in Isaacs Auditorium of Seibert Hall. This reading is free and open to the public. Copies of the book will be available for purchase and signing.

Knowledge, Forms, the Aviary was originally written as Kelsey’s doctoral dissertation at Denver University and won the prestigious Sawtooth Poetry Prize last year. Her award includes a publishing contract with Ahsahta Press, which released the first pressing of the volume in January. Acclaimed poet Carolyn Forché, who judged the 2005 Sawtooth Award, described Kelsey’s work as “a masterful debut…at once philosophical and political.”

Inspiration for Kelsey’s Knowledge, Forms, the Aviary stems from Plato’s Theaetetus, in which Socrates compares knowledge to an aviary, a bird carrying knowledge that its owner can freely choose. “This vision is horrifying because the knowledge-birds are tapped and the knower ‘plucks them down’ to use them. The mind as a thing that ‘uses’ the world seems like a very skewed and limited sense of being,” Kelsey writes.

This is Kelsey’s first published book of poetry. She is also the author of the chapbook Little Dividing Doors in the Mind (Noemi Press, 2005). She has been published in several journals, including The Boston Review, Verse, 26, and others. From 2003-2005, she was the associate editor of the Denver Quarterly.

Kelsey attributes her attachment to form to the 14 years she spent as a dancer. “The training and rigors of classical ballet have been fundamental to the writer and person that I am. …When you grow up spending hours inspecting the forms that you make in the mirror as you are making them, you realize the extent to which the act of dancing does not equal the image created by the dancer; rather, it is more.”

Kelsey is currently in her first year of teaching in the creative writing program at Susquehanna University. She teaches introductory and advanced classes in poetry and the Editing and Publishing class, which is aimed at giving students practical experience in working with the publishing of literary journals.

Kelsey’s more recent work includes a project for which she has collaborated with her husband, Peter Yumi. Yumi is a visual artist and musician. Together, the two have combined her poetry and his music, which Kelsey hopes to share at the reading.