CATHRYN COFELL
.jpg)
WELCOME
This is the web of Cathryn Cofell,
author of eight books of poetry, hundreds of published poems and essays, and Appleton, Wisconsin's first Poet Laureate.
" Frankly feminist, Cofell's energetic, unconventional poems tell hard truths with wit and wide-open eyes." - Kelly Cherry
Cathryn Cofell is the author of two full-length collections, including Stick Figure with Skirt, winner of the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award, and six chapbooks. She’s been published 300+ times and earned over 50 awards, including the Lorine Niedecker Poetry Award, the Mill Prize, and the Christopher Latham Sholes Award for mentoring other poets.
She is Appleton, Wisconsin’s first Poet Laureate, head of the Poetry Unlocked Collective, and the Immediate Past President of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets. Her poems have been set to music on Lip, with Obvious Dog, and in concrete on sidewalks in Appleton and Waupaca. Cat is an experienced reader, workshop instructor, and keynote speaker.
Books
These books and a limited selection of chapbooks can also be purchased directly from Cat. Use the contact form to message her.
Stick Figure with Skirt
Winner of the 2019 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award
"Cathryn Cofell's Stick Figure with Skirt points sharply at the frenzy and anxiety of the 'busy culture' we now inhabit, where there is always something to do. In these poems, Cofell fights against the routine by observing and celebrating the details, and poking fun at the tedium." - Tara Betts, author of Refuse to Disappear & Break the Habit
ISBN 978-1-59948-771-7
Main Street Rag, 2019
$14.00 (plus shipping)
Sister Satellite
In Sister Satellite, Cathryn Cofell writes with power and a hard-earned, wide-ranging scope.
As poet Oliver de la Paz writes, “the language of Cofell’s debut collection shimmers in amplitudes of love.” Love, yes, but hers is an engaged love that won’t let us go easily. Her poems provide an answer to the politics and pressures of our times, as Cofell writes about women’s lives and bodies in lines which are funny, bold, defiant, angry, and celebratory. Married love and unvoiced lust, pregnancy, miscarriage, adoption, abortion and aging all figure into the mix. Cofell writes her version of the truth bravely, movingly and with new vision and tenderness.
ISBN 978-0984656837
Cowfeather Press, 2013
$10.00
Jericho Brown, winner
of the American Book Award
Stick Figure With Skirt is at turns humorous and morose. These
poems are always pleading to or
against loneliness, “Please memo
me home…Please home me…”
This book is Dickinsonian in its
way of believing in the power of
the mind, the internal world, the imagination that always reaches
beyond the self.
Grace Bauer,
author of MEAN/TIME
In these wise and often witty poems, Cathryn Cofell explores the complicated intersections between what we commonly refer to as making a living vs. having a life. Honest, insightful, and formally dexterous, Cofell—the self-described “Lucille Ball of Zen”—reminds us that, ultimately, being fully human is our true life’s work. Poems like hers help us do it.
Vince Gotera, Editor, North American Review
Cofell’s language is sometimes enigmatic but always meaningful, energy-filled and magnetic, 'gasoline ... flame' tempered by the light of a 'glowing moon.' Brilliant.
Contact Me
Cathryn Cofell currently lives in Appleton, Wisconsin. To book a reading, workshop, or keynote, please complete the form below or email catcofell@gmail.com
Sample Poems
From Stick Figure with Skirt:
Portage Magazine, "Suspension Bridge"
Main Street Rag, "Nine Ways of Rising," "The Billable Hour," &
"The Zombie Speaks"
Volume One, "What I Learned from My Father"
From Sister Satellite:
Wisconsin People & Ideas, "What to Give Her "
Your Daily Poem, "Introduction to Gardening"
Journals/Presses:
Rattle, "Leaves of Grass/Suicide/Psychic Hotlines"
Rhino Poetry, "The Reason Trees Don't Talk" (with Michael Kriesel)