Karen Kelsay
Author of Dove on a Church Bench

Karen Kelsay has a light poetic touch, in each sense of the word light: Though she consistently takes up the human experience with longing and loss, her poems are never weighed down with despair. She lightens the heaviness of melancholy and regret with her faith in an ordered universe. In Dove on a Church Bench, she reiterates this order by bearing witness that Nature’s creative cycle is cleansing, for the earth, for the body, for the soul; and through her commitment to remember her familial and community histories by recording and sharing them. Like the “sacramental hour” that frames the collection’s title poem, this communion of words acknowledges and renews the shared light and hope that can accompany the ritualized retelling of memories, a collective act skillfully embodied here in the rhythms and meter of poetic form. And like the dove that descends upon the same poem, as upon Kelsay’s collection, the poet’s language lights upon the soul and flutters around, “reflecting [the] light” of God’s presence across our continued experience with the world.

About Karen:

Karen Kelsay is a native Californian, who has spent most

of her life in the small city of Orange; where the turn of

the century traffic circle and historic storefronts still look

the way they did several decades ago.

 

As a child, most of her weekends were spent on the family

boat in San Diego, where she developed a lifetime love for

the sea. At age 23, she moved to Alaska, married and had

three children before returning to California.

 

Karen is the editor of Victorian Violet Press, an online

poetry magazine that encourages lyrical poetry. A formalist

at heart, she writes in varying styles with an emphasis on

strong metrical work.

 

Some of her poems are forthcoming, or have appeared in

the following journals: The Lyric, The New Formalist,

Raintown Review, 14x14, Lucid Rhythms and The Grey

Sparrow. She has been widely published over the past two

years, and has received three Pushcart Prize nominations.

 

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