The Fisher Queen

Drawing together poems from six award-winning collections, Kirkpatrick introduces the best of her poetry with the voice of the Fisher Queen, the otherworldly spouse of the Fisher King. Hers is a story of wounding, equal to her husband's, and just as connected to a wasteland, figured here as 20th and 21st century environmental devastation. These poems explore the multiple exiles of living in a woman's body; traversing boundaries of region, nation, and class; and confronting human violations of the natural world. Moving between the quotidian and the mythic, Kirkpatrick's multi-voiced lyrics constitute a powerful quest. Kathryn Kirkpatrick holds a Ph.D. from Emory University, where she received an Academy of American Poets poetry prize. She lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and teaches at Appalachian State University. Three of her collections of poetry have won the NC Poetry Society's Brockman-Campbell award, one received the Roanoke-Chowan Poetry Prize from the NC Literary and Historical Association, and another was a finalist for the SIBA poetry award.