About Michele
Michele Battiste is the author of Waiting for the Wreck to Burn (Trio House, 2019), Uprising ( Black Lawrence, 2014), and Ink for an Odd Cartography ( Black Lawrence, 2009). She is also the author of several chapbooks, including Left: Letters to Strangers (Grey Book, 2014). Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Rumpus, Memorious, and Women's Studies Quarterly, among others.
Michele has taught poetry workshops for Wichita State University, the Prison Arts Program in Hutchinson, KS, Gotham Writers' Workshops, and Teen Ink. A finalist for the National Poetry Series, she has received grants and awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, AWP, the Center for the American West, the Jerome Foundation, and the NY State Senate. She lives in Colorado where she works for The Nature Conservancy, raising money to save the planet.
Michele Battiste presents poems of such a dynamic intelligence that the reader finds herself exhilarated: It's like riding with the top down!...Battiste has an exceedingly sharp eye and an even sharper wit.
- Kelly Cherry
In tender, hungry poems "skirting the edge of calamity" Michele Battiste crafts and explores a mythical, Escheresque city of grief...This is a rich and haunting book.
- Tess Taylor, on Waiting for the Wreck to Burn
These poems are driven by some super high-octane duende. They spin and spill all over the place with a controlled recklessness and a sustained energy. She's ready to take flight at the smallest provocation, wings oiled up, in tune with the mad universe.
- Jim Daniels, on Ink for an Odd Cartography
