K. Iver
Visiting Poet
The opening poem of K. Iver’s debut collection is “Nostalgia” which suggests, all at once, a desire to engage with the past, an attempted refutation of romanticizing what has come before, and an insistence on engaging with, rather then obfuscating, the fallibility of the self and our inevitable mistakes. “This collection is equal parts elegy and origin story,” writes torrin a. greathouse, “in these poems, celebration and lament collide to form a complicated portrait of queer grief and how we survive in the aftermath of loss.” The prayer-like poems in Iver’s acclaimed collection interrogate memory and the devastation of grief while grappling toward the possibility of solace.
K. Iver (they/them) is a nonbinary trans poet born in Mississippi. Their book Short Film Starring My Beloved’s Red Bronco won the 2022 Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry from Milkweed Editions. Short Film won the Wisconsin Book Award and was shortlisted for the L.A. Times Book Prize, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and the Lambda Literary Award. It was named a Best Book of 2023 by the New York Public Library. Iver’s poems have appeared in Boston Review, Kenyon Review, The L.A. Review of Books, and elsewhere. Iver has received fellowships from The Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation. They have a Ph.D. in poetry from Florida State University.
Iver will read at Leo Weinstein Auditorium in Wright Hall on Tuesday, March 4, 2025 at 7 p.m. A livestream will be available on the BDPC YouTube page.