Author Archives: Katie

Tasty Other in Mom Egg Review

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]

AWP, Biola, & A Turn for the Verse

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

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

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.

San Diego Readings

I loved being part of the SD Writers, Ink local author exhibit and featuring at the (Not) Dead (Yet) Poetry Society’s reading on February 3 with Ron Salisbury and Anthony Conwright.

Not Dead Yet Poetry Series - 2017

I also had a wonderful time as a featured reader for Non-Standard Lit on February 5 with Kaia Sand and Suzanne Stein. (Yes, we had a poetry reading during the Super Bowl. I did read the closest thing I have to a football poem…)

Non-Standard Lit 2017 - zoom

My next local reading will be with the New Alchemy Poetry Series on April 19 at Lestat’s Coffee House.

Update: Readings, PHV, WRR, and Publications

The end of the semester and the holidays kept me away, but I did have a wonderful book launch at PLNU on Nov. 30 and an awesome San Diego book release at the Women’s Museum of California on Dec. 3. What a privilege to share my weird Tasty Other poems and to read alongside some of my favorite people!

img_5778 group-jr

Here is my Poetry Has Value post about November. What a bizarre month that was. I’m still working on the December post and 2016 year-end reflection, but those will be ready soon.

My journal, Whale Road Review, published its first anniversary issue on December 1. I love the issue, and I love the work of choosing and sharing other people’s incredible writing.

I had 3 poems published in a mixed-genre mystery anthology called Candlesticks and Daggers. I also had a review of Luci Shaw’s Sea Glass: New & Selected Poems in the Advent/Christmas 2016 issue of The Cresset.

I’ve been sending out poetry submissions a lot over winter break and reading a lot of submissions for Whale Road Review. Now that classes are beginning tomorrow, I’ll be getting back into a regular writing routine, especially since PLNU awarded me an internal grant of a 4-unit release to work on a poetry project. (Thanks!) Here we go…

Events

I’ve created an Events page for my Tasty Other book tour!

Now that I have an Events page, I will stop saying “book tour” with finger quotes. 🙂

The first two events are coming up this week!

11/30/16: San Diego
Tasty Other Book Launch
Point Loma Nazarene University
3900 Lomaland Dr., Colt Hall
Wednesday, 3 p.m.

12/3/16: San Diego
Tasty Other Release Reading
The Women’s Museum of California
2730 Historic Decatur Rd.
Liberty Station, Barracks 16
Saturday, 4:30 p.m.
http://womensmuseumca.org/event/katie-manning-poetry-reading

 

Nevermore, Review, & Interviews

Life has been full of the very bad and the very good. I’ll share some of the good…

On Oct. 29, I was a featured reader at the Nevermore Free Poetry Festival in Van Nuys, and it was an amazing experience. Thanks, Nicelle Davis, for making magical things happen. I definitely need more full-day poetry festivals and Poe-inspired costumes in my life. I probably need to wear black lipstick more frequently too…

nevermore-reading-crop

Photo by Edwin Vasquez

In the last few weeks, I’ve been the featured poet in WTH Weekly (thanks, Cassie Paton!) and A Door with a Voice has received a review in Mom Egg Review. Speaking of Marvels also just published an interview with me about A Door with a Voice with some deeply thoughtful questions from R Vinoshini Naidoo.

I’ve had a few poems accepted for publication in the last few weeks too, which feels great, of course. Thanks, Yellow Chair Review, San Diego Poetry Annual, and Candlesticks & Daggers!

Next up: Tasty Other, my first full-length poetry book, will be released next week! I’ve been setting up readings and will soon create an Events page with all of my “book tour” information (and I will let myself feel like a rock star for at least a minute).

Review: A Door with a Voice at Tarpaulin Sky

Noh Anothai had me at Sappho. 🙂 Here is an excerpt from his review of A Door with a Voice:

“Like Sappho in reverse, Manning ‘[uses] the last chapter of one book from the Bible as a wordbook’ for each poem. She thus shatters the world’s most widely read religious text and creates sixteen miniature mosaics out of the broken pieces.”

What a thoughtful and thought-provoking review! Thanks, Noh, Tarpaulin Sky, Fox, and Agape Editions!

Interview at Carpe Noctem

This was such a fun interview that I did about my forthcoming book Tasty Other (and other poetry-related things). Thanks, Nicole Ross Rollender! Here’s one of my favorite parts…

Do you think poets have a responsibility as artists to respond to what’s happening in the world, and put that message out there? Does your work address social issues?
I don’t think poets have to respond directly to current events, but then I don’t think poems have to have a clear message. Some poems show us an image like a painting. Some play with sound. I do think that creating poems—and any act of artistic creation—is a way of responding to what’s happening in the world regardless of the content of those poems. To say that beauty and art matter in the face of violence and fear is radical.