After an October full of my sons’ birthdays, lots of grading, and Halloween festivities (side note: we were awesome in our Super Mario Bros. costumes), November was full of poetry.

Photo by Sarah Butterfield

UMKC, my masters alma mater, brought me out to Kansas City to give a poetry reading at The Writers Place. I loved reading in the company of Jermaine Thompson, Bonnie Bolling, and Jason Ryberg, and I loved being in that wonderful venue full of friendly faces. It was a bittersweet event though; my thesis advisor, Michelle Boisseau, passed away the day before I got to town. I closed my reading with one of my favorite poems of hers. I’m grateful for her guidance and for the way she pushed me forward in my writing.

Photo by Natasha Ria El-Scari

The next day, I also led a workshop at The Writers Place on revising and submitting work for publication, Later that afternoon, I got to read poetry alongside Karen Craigo at the Johnson County Library’s Leawood branch. All around, I felt so celebrated by my mentors, grad school peers, and friends. These events were a wonderful way to celebrate Tasty Other‘s first year of publication! 

I was also pleased at the end of November to have two of my poems, “The Book of Us” and “The Book of Cons,” published in Issue 6 of Ink & Letters, which is available for purchase here.

I wish us all a December that’s just as full of good poetry and good people.

I was so busy giving readings and talks (and starting the semester, and parenting two small humans, and publishing a new issue of Whale Road Review, and…) in August and September that I didn’t post about the readings here, so I will do that now.

I was the featured poet at Speak for Yourself in Provo, UT, mid-August, and I had a wonderful time hearing some young writers, meeting Trish Hopkinson, and visiting with my sister.

Speak for Yourself

I was honored to perform in The Poetry Circus in Griffith Park once again, this time with a full line up of women. Nicelle Davis makes the most magical events happen!

The Poetry Circus

On the first day of September, I drove up to Santa Monica to be a featured reader at The Rapp Saloon Reading Series. I loved hearing the other poets (Martin Ott and Julayne Lee), seeing a college friend, and spending some time with Cynthia Alessandra Briano.

The Rapp Saloon Reading Series

On September 18, I was thrilled to be the first poet for this fall’s Tabula Poetica Reading Series at Chapman University. I recorded a podcast with Mike Gravagno, gave a talk about connecting as writers, visited Victoria Chang’s wonderful graduate students, enjoyed dinner with Anna Leahy and Richard Bausch, and gave an evening reading to such a responsive and wonderful audience. What an awesome day!

Tabula Poetica Reading Series

I had such a fun time chatting with Mike Gravagno last month at Chapman University for the Writers’ Block podcast!

We talked about poetry, especially my newest book Tasty Other, and the weird variety of things that influence my writing, from board games to God.

I’m so thrilled to have a poem in the American Journal of Nursing this month. It’s fun to say that I have a poem in a peer-reviewed nursing journal, but it’s especially wonderful that it is this poem, which I wrote to honor those who died in the Baga massacre of January 2015. I’m glad that this poem is finding readers.

Here’s another wonderful, thoughtful review of Tasty Other. Thanks, Juli Anna Herndon and Literary Mama!

“Katie Manning’s collection of poems, Tasty Other, which won the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award in 2016, examines motherhood with a fresh, acerbic eye and an imaginative wit. While not lacking in tenderness, Manning eschews sentimentality in order to dissect the daydreams and nightmares of the new mother in fantastical detail.”

What a lovely review of Tasty Other! Thanks, Anne Britting Oleson and Mom Egg Review!

“For in that sleep…what dreams may come,” said Hamlet. He was speaking of death, but in Katie Manning’s new collection, Tasty Other, many of the poems stem from the way the hopes, fears, and hormones of pregnancy make themselves known through our subconscious and our dreamscapes. It’s the fear of the unknown: will I be a good mother? Will my baby be a boy or girl? Will my child be “normal” (whatever that means)? Manning’s poems channel some of the answers a mother-to-be might wake up with, answers which are by turn hilarious, frightening, and heartbreaking. [read more]

Life has been and continues to be chaotic, but sometimes it’s chaotic in wonderful poetic ways. Here’s a quick update about my recent readings.

In mid-February, I had an awesome time attending the AWP conference in D.C. I did some daily updates on social media (feel free to find me on Facebook and Twitter!), so I won’t try to re-capture every detail here. It is always wonderful to be in the presence of so many writers, and I enjoyed getting to read from Tasty Other on the Voices of Main Street panel.

Voices of Main Street

Over my spring break, Chris Davidson brought me up to Biola University as a guest poet. I gave a reading with novelist Paul Buchanan, and the next morning I visited Vision, Voice, and Practice, an incredible hybrid art and writing course.

Reading at Biola

On March 10, I got to read at the Meraki Cafe in San Diego for a reading series called A Turn for the Verse. I loved hearing poetry from Bill Harding and fiction from Keenan Colditz, and this was such a fun, responsive audience to my Tasty Other poems.

I’ve got a couple of San Diego readings coming up in April, so please visit my Events page for details.