 Dr. Jennifer Kidney Kidney’s award winning poetry has been published in numerous magazines and journals. She has been performing her poetry since 1968 when she won the Great Lakes College Association Poetry Contest and did a reading tour of member colleges. Among numerous other readings, Kidney has read at the SCLMA convention in New Orleans; the opening of the Dallas Museum of Art; for Paperback Books in Mesquite and Dallas, Texas; libraries across the country; and several venues in Norman. In the spring of 2005, she was one of ten poets invited to give readings for the Sundown Poetry Series, which is part of the prestigious annual Spoleto Festival hosted by the City of Charleston, South Carolina. Kidney received her B.A. with Highest Honors in English, from Oberlin College and her Master’s and Ph.D. in English from Yale University. She has more than twenty years of college-level teaching experience. She has taught creative writing for adults and children, has worked as a poet-in-the-schools for the Oklahoma Arts Council and, since 1988, has been Director of Let’s Talk About it, Oklahoma, a statewide humanities-based reading and discussion project for libraries and other nonprofit organizations.
In addition to her most recent work, Kidney is author of poetry chapbooks: Field Encounters (Full Court Press, 1981); Endangered Species (renegade/Point Riders Press, 1984); Animal Magnetism (WOWAPI, 1985); and Women Who Sleep With Dogs. Two poems follow: ORIGINAL SKIN I was born
in original skin.
It fit me well
and suits me still
though millions of cells
have replaced themselves.
Now wrinkled and mottled
and sagging in places,
it’s uniquely mine.
If I believed in
intelligent design,
I’d say I wore
a designer original.
I’m always garbed
in my birthday suit
beneath off-the-rack
tee shirts and jeans.
I’m comfortable in my skin
and glad I’m not a snake
whose fate it is to shed
his marbled hide
as seasons dictate.
Excerpt from “Life List,” title poem of my new book, Life List:
I came west by way
of Guatemala
like a warbler migrating
north for the summer
and saw vermillion
and scissortail flycatchers,
the painted bunting, and at last
the bluebird of happiness,
as common in the east
but always before
invisible to me.
For additional information about PAS programs, contact The Performing Arts Studio at 405-307-9320. PAS office hours in the Norman Depot are Tuesday through Friday from 8:00 AM to 3:00 PM, and Sunday from 1:00 to 5:00. |
