Limited Edition Broadsides for Crow Funeral

from “She Was”, Crow Funeral by Kate Hanson Foster

Limited edition broadside printing 2022 11x17

ultra premium presentation paper, flat matte finish

Crow Funeral Cover Reveal

Forthcoming March 2022

“God doesn’t know a thing about mothers”

If you take God out of women, there is no God. Kate Hanson Foster’s world is a beautiful barn, a frightening mind, and a shimmering street. A timeless America.

— Kristin Hersh

American singer-songwriter and author of Seeing Sideways: A Memoir of Music and Motherhood

Through poems of motherhood, mortality, loss and faith, Kate Hanson Foster’s collection Crow Funeral posits what it means to not only make a secure home for your children, but to become the literal dwelling place. From gestation through birth and the accrual of days spent mothering, Hanson Foster circles the challenges and hard truths all mothers must face. Hanson Foster’s unflinching examination of post-partum depression and anxiety is tempered with love letters to her children:

“I became a mom / only once, you know. // You are the bike / I learned to ride.”

She writes stark lyrics for home, her complicated relationship with Catholicism, her husband as father and lover, and most powerfully, her own body. Hanson Foster not only honors her body’s capability to bear and sustain children and nurture a family, but sings praises to its sensuality. Crow Funeral depicts the unique intimacy between a mother and her children, an intimacy which sometimes blurs the line between “me” and “we,” that which “God doesn’t / know a thing about,” fraught with overwhelming love and shot through with ferocity.

— Sarah Sousa

Author of Hex and See the Wolf

In Crow Funeral, drama and desire build line by line and poem by poem. The work here is intensely personal. The narrative and its themes concern specific human beings, yet they maintain a universal posture that calls all of us closer to our humanity. Kate Hanson Foster is a poet of uncommon wit, charm, candor, and clarity. She keeps her focus on the poems, not the poet, and deploys her abundant skills to create an enduring and important testament that is simultaneously devastating and hopeful.

— Michael Kleber-Diggs

Author of Worldy Things, winner of the 2020 Max Ritvo Poetry Prize

Poem in Nelle Journal & CMV Awareness

I am beyond thrilled to have a poem in latest issue of NELLE alongside some incredible women writers like Francesca Bell, Lynne Thompson, Alison Pelegrin, Lisa Beech Hartz, Lauren Camp, Sandra Meek and so many more. I have so much admiration for Lauren Goodwin Slaughter for all her hard work to make Nelle such a powerful magazine. Thank you, Lauren, for believing in my poem.

This poem, "Four for a Boy" means so much to me, because it deals with one of the biggest heartbreaks a woman can go through. It feels extra special to me that it lives in a mag that publishes all women. 

I have found a generous, anonymous donor who is willing to match the cost of buying a $10 subscription to NELLE and I will donate the tally from this post to the CMV foundation in memory of my sister, Emma's son, Shane.

In one click, you can support women writers, as well as a cause that is very dear to my heart. Please just Notify me that you subscribed so I can make an eventual total of the donation. I will be matching subscriptions with donations until the end of May 2020.

Subscription info is here:
https://www.uab.edu/cas/englishpublications/nelle/subscribe

To learn more about the CMV virus and the foundation, click here:

https://www.nationalcmv.org

Thanks so much for reading. 

Kate Hanson Foster in the 12th edition Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature

My poem, “Elegy of Color” is included in the 12th edition Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature

So much gratitude to Salamander Magazine for originally publishing the poem posted below

Open: Journal of Arts & Letters: Featured Writer

I’m so grateful to have been the featured writer for OJAL for the month of May. Seven of my poems were published, as well as a craft essay and an interview. Since the content came out daily in individual posts, I’m compiling it into this blog post for easier access. This feature means so much to me because all of the content is pulled or inspired from my current manuscript, titled Crow Funeral. The next step is finding it a happy home!

Thanks again for reading.

Poems in the feature:

Vessel

911

The Sentinel

Glimpse

Now I Lay Them Down To Sleep

Grease

Reincarnate

Craft Essay:

Crow Funerals and the Loss of Meaning

Interview

Vera Falenko, Contributing Editor Interviews Featured Writer Kate Hanson Foster

Reviews by Kate: Iron Moon

I was so excited to read and review Iron Moon, translated by Eleanor Goodman for Doug Holder's Boston are small press & Poetry scene blog. Reviewing poetry translation is so fascinating to me because you dig through so many layers of art and craftship. Sometimes poetry translations fall flat, but this book sings. Top shelf. The poems will stay with me.

The “iron” in Iron Moon is an image that fuses itself coldly and frequently. It is the ear splitting sounds of cutting gears and kinetic friction. Other times, iron is a metal deeply unheard, “Covered by twilight the huge cooling chunk of iron/gives off a darkening silence.” (Alu, “An Elegy for C”) Iron is an all-consuming crude symbol of broken dreams; the ethos of metal and machinery that is a heavy hit on one’s intelligence and artistry.

Interview on johnmac's 200th Radio Show

Listen to me giggle and talk poetry on the  johnmac Radio Show

Writer to Writer, Poet to Poet w/ Doug Holder (video)

Got a chance to talk to poet, publisher, art's editor, professor Doug Holder on his TV show. We talked about poems, Lowell, crows, god, and my lack of bio. Watch here.