Some recent publications:
"Aphasia" in Chicago Quarterly Review #27, fall 2018
"Blood Moon" in The Night's Magician: Poems about the Moon,
Negative Capability Press, September 2018
"Introducing the Poetry of Louise Dupré" (Translation feature:
preface & 5 translated poems), Cincinnati Review, 15.1,
summer 2018
"You Are the Valley" in Cloudbank 12, 2018
"Resident Merlin" in Potomac Review 62, spring 2018
"Air Quality Advisory" in Cirque, winter 2018
“Because Sad”; Summer Vagaries”; "Visiting the Stones”; "The
Gravity of Ground”; “Return to Summer Lake” in
Peacock Journal, fall 2017.
“Cedar Waxwing” [nominated for Pushcart Prize] and “Belted
Kingfisher” in Bird’s Thumb, October 2016
“Écheveau de lumière” (eight poems from Skein of Light
translated into French by Louise Dupré). Les écrits 145,
November 2015
May 2015: Karen McPherson's poem "Provenance" wins First Place in the Poet's Choice category of the Oregon Poetry Association spring 2015 contest. The poem was published in the OPA's annual anthology Verseweavers issue 20.
"Aphasia" in Chicago Quarterly Review #27, fall 2018
"Blood Moon" in The Night's Magician: Poems about the Moon,
Negative Capability Press, September 2018
"Introducing the Poetry of Louise Dupré" (Translation feature:
preface & 5 translated poems), Cincinnati Review, 15.1,
summer 2018
"You Are the Valley" in Cloudbank 12, 2018
"Resident Merlin" in Potomac Review 62, spring 2018
"Air Quality Advisory" in Cirque, winter 2018
“Because Sad”; Summer Vagaries”; "Visiting the Stones”; "The
Gravity of Ground”; “Return to Summer Lake” in
Peacock Journal, fall 2017.
“Cedar Waxwing” [nominated for Pushcart Prize] and “Belted
Kingfisher” in Bird’s Thumb, October 2016
“Écheveau de lumière” (eight poems from Skein of Light
translated into French by Louise Dupré). Les écrits 145,
November 2015
May 2015: Karen McPherson's poem "Provenance" wins First Place in the Poet's Choice category of the Oregon Poetry Association spring 2015 contest. The poem was published in the OPA's annual anthology Verseweavers issue 20.
Le Bateau-atelier (1874)
[The Studio Boat].
Claude Monet.
Kröller-Müller Museum.
[photo of a print of the painting]
Comments by contest judge Maxine Scates:
I think long poems are hard to write so my primary criteria in judging these poems was how well each of these poets held the elements of the poem together. Since long poems are often narratives, as these were, the poet must move the narrative forward while also maintaining a nuanced imagistic thread throughout, a kind of echoing that lets you both remember where you’ve been but which also satisfyingly foreshadows where you’ve arrived by the poem’s end–even if it’s surprising. Thus, my criteria here was how well these poems did just that, while, of course, embodying the poem’s emotional content.
“Provenance,” the first place poem, is a meditation on a photograph of a painting, that image in and of itself, a fairly distanced representation, but what the poet does is evoke the history of the speaker’s relationship to the painting until by poem’s end, the distance closed, this exploration of image and memory has fully transformed the painting from photograph into self– “where each saw/ what the other saw/ and how it holds us there.”
I think long poems are hard to write so my primary criteria in judging these poems was how well each of these poets held the elements of the poem together. Since long poems are often narratives, as these were, the poet must move the narrative forward while also maintaining a nuanced imagistic thread throughout, a kind of echoing that lets you both remember where you’ve been but which also satisfyingly foreshadows where you’ve arrived by the poem’s end–even if it’s surprising. Thus, my criteria here was how well these poems did just that, while, of course, embodying the poem’s emotional content.
“Provenance,” the first place poem, is a meditation on a photograph of a painting, that image in and of itself, a fairly distanced representation, but what the poet does is evoke the history of the speaker’s relationship to the painting until by poem’s end, the distance closed, this exploration of image and memory has fully transformed the painting from photograph into self– “where each saw/ what the other saw/ and how it holds us there.”
