The UST libraries present an author reading from 

Kirsten Dierking

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Please come to hear and meet local poet, Kirsten Dierking, who will read from her most recent book Northern Oracle.

Tuesday, April 15th 4:00 PM

O'Shaughnessy-Frey Library Room 108
(The leather room)

Book signing to follow the reading

This event is free and open to the public -- Refreshments will  be provided

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.  
                                      
-- Louis Jenkins, author of North of the Cities

When poet Kirsten Dierking discovered in the 1990’s that part of her family was descended from the Sami in northern Finland, she began studying Sami culture, their close connection with the land, and their traditional animist religions.  This influence is strongly felt in her new book of poems, Northern Oracle, where again and again the author returns to the theme that our lives are inextricably entwined with the spiritual in animals and nature.  The book’s sections address such issues as how we find home, how we live in a time of war, and how we experience aging - and finds connections between these issues and the natural world.  Parallels develop between the birds in Dierking’s Minnesota backyard and terrorism, between shoveling snow and animism.  In the end, Northern Oracle recognizes the body's transitory existence, but finds comfort in the idea that transience is an essential element of nature.