Katharine Whitcomb

Artist Statement

My writing plays with sound and form whether I am working with poetry or prose. My work is not confessional--my speaker/narrator allows access to the interiority of thoughts, the mind, grief, hope. I am interested in writing that is strange, full of character, wise. My forthcoming book, Habitats, is a meditation upon the search for a place of belonging—the poems explore the speaker moving through habitats, literal and figurative, (forest, hotels, dreams); she experiences environments as a seeker and a visitor. Habitats wrestles with the complexities of this journey—what does it mean to witness oneself but still crave witness from the world? This collection explores how we change and grow in our search for our own “habitat.”

Katharine Whitcomb The Daughter's Almanac: Poems Published 2015 by The Backwaters Press/Univ. of Nebraska Press Winner of the Backwaters Prize "With unflinching stanzas threaded through with grief's relentless lyric, The Daughter's Almanac is a masterwork, a deftly crafted illustration of the myriad ways beauty collides with pain." --Patricia Smith, 2014 Backwaters Prize Judge

Bio

Short Bio: Katharine Whitcomb is the author of five collections of poems: Habitats is forthcoming in September 2023 in the Possession Sound Series from Poetry Northwest Editions. Previous collections are The Daughter’s Almanac (University of Nebraska Press/The Backwaters Press, chosen by Patricia Smith as the winner of the 2014 Backwaters Prize), Lamp of Letters (Floating Bridge Press, winner of the 2009 Floating Bridge Chapbook Award), Saints of South Dakota & Other Poems (Bluestem Press, chosen by Lucia Perillo as the winner of the 2000 Bluestem Award), and Hosannas (Parallel Press, 1999). She was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, and was awarded fellowships to the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. Recent poems appear in Bennington Review, The Gettysburg Review, On the Seawall, Tupelo Quarterly and Guesthouse. She teaches at Central Washington University and lives in Ellensburg, Washington.

www.katharinewhitcomb.com