We at Spout Press are honored to publish the latest work of Kirsten Dierking, one of the Twin Cities' most renowned and beloved poets.
Kirsten Dierking‘s previous book of poetry, One Red Eye, was published by Holy Cow Press in 2001. She has received grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board, The Loft Literary Center and the SASE/Jerome Foundation.
Here are just some of the accolades Kirsten has received from some very discerning literary minds.
Kirsten Dierking's poems often focus on the small things, the unnoticed natural world around her, “the unknowable swimmers” in the water beneath the
canoe, or the realization of the “glorious spirit” inside a wild flower. It is this seeing that gives her poems their joy. But it is the unflinching realization that “you love things that can’t help leaving” and that, “you can’t stop/ yourself becoming/ all the white,/ expressionless snow” that gives the poems their strength.
—Louis Jenkins, author of North of the Cities
In her poem, Border Lines, Kirsten Dierking asks, “How much will I miss,
closing my eyes?” Reading her new book, Northern Oracle, I felt in the presence
of an American poet whose eyes, mind, and heart seem wide open. I
am most struck by her quality of attention—the range of subjects in the world
that she notes and makes new with her unerring language is remarkable.
When the poet notes the radiant world, rescued out of a world of war, suffering,
claimed by her good eyes, and her wisdom, we know we are the fortunate
ones, to be seeing our world through her beautiful poems.
—Deborah Keenan, author of Willow Room, Green Door: New and Selected Poems
Kirsten Dierking traces her ancestry not just to Finland but to the Sami, the
only indigenous population currently in the European Union. That connection
gives her as poet a special sensitivity to place, both landscape and home.
She speaks of an “ache to extract / meaning from vastness,” and as readers we
see that ache turn to the pleasures of recognition and discovery.
—Philip Dacey, author of The Mystery of Max Schmitt:
Poems on the Life and Work of Thomas Eakins