Kristin Bock’s collection of poetry, CLOISTERS, won Tupelo Press’s First Book Award and an Eric Hoffer da Vinci Eye Award. Her second collection, GLASS BIKINI, was published by Tupelo Press in December 2021. She has published widely in journals, including The Black Warrior Review, Columbia, Crazyhorse, FENCE, Pleiades, Prairie Schooner, and VERSE. A Massachusetts Cultural Council fellow, she holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst where she teaches. She lives in the village of Montague, MA with her husband, artist Geoffrey Kostecki, and together they restore liturgical art.
CONNECT
cloisters
Reverse the plough! Pluck me from this orchard of
bones—from the hummingbird flying backwards
to kiss an orchid...
Kristin Bock’s potent and undeniably original voice sings throughout this award-winning first collection of poetry. Deftly weaving images and symbols, Bock entices us with striking, transcendently unusual pastorals. The poet’s spare wordplay is subtly tinged with gothic imagery, cloaked with an easy innocence, and yet laced with visceral insight that offers the double rewards of wisdom and depth. This is a compelling new voice, brimming with raw emotional power, a voice that effortlessly enlightens and arouses, assuring the reader that if nothing on Earth may be taken at face value, neither may it be taken for granted or for lost.
“Poetry comes unbidden and it comes by design, with desire. I love this book's adamant attentions and unashamed ardors.”
—Dara Wier
“Kristin Bock’s poems are original and always surprising. Images are chiseled with great care, each word chosen with exacting particularity. Though most poems are short, they add up to a powerful vision. I love this book.”
—James Tate
Glass bikini
Part creation myth, part prophesy, Kristin Bock’s Glass Bikini stitches together the fabrics of our dystopian present, reminding us of our culpability and power in this grand, human experiment. Monsters prowl here inspired as much by Sarah Kane as Mary Shelley. We hold a tiny prehistoric horse in our paws. We are masochistic voodoo dolls traipsing hand in hand through grisliness and the sublime. Glass Bikini is both mirror and warning, asking us to see our own strange and terrifying shapes, the monsters we have helped create, and the ones we have become.
“Sometimes monsters are so big you can’t see them. But you can feel their hands ragdolling you, Kristin Bock’s uncanny speaker confides, and we know all too well the coordinates of this disorientation. Warning or weather report? Mythic romp or unwelcome mirror? Yes, the provocative and enrapturing poems of Glass Bikini assert as they take us for a raucous and irresistible ride.”
—Lisa Olstein
