In-Store Poetry Reading: Jennifer Reimer and Connie Soper

Annie Bloom’s welcomes Oregon poets Jennifer Reimer and Connie Soper, whose new collections are published by Airlie Press.

This in-store reading is first come, first served. Please be mindful of any store health policies that might be in effect on the night of the reading.

Signed and personalized copies of both authors’ books are available for pre-order! Please, please, please include the name for personalization in the order notes; or indicate “signed only.”

About Keşke:

Poems that join the ancient and the modern to the intense lyric experience of self-discovery. Wistful memory, future longing, nostalgia for unrealized possibilities, Keşke joins the ancient and the modern to the intense lyric experience of self-discovery. Watery scenes rewrite Homeric myth with a feminist eye while verses unfold inner worlds with tangible sensuality. Experimental yet measured, Keşke is shaped by forgotten caves, ancient ruins, wave-battered ships, and the ragged angularity of the Mediterranean coast. Evoking desire for what is absent, Keşke traverses the slipping movement of time and attachment, hope and impossibility, with a clear eye and a passionate hunger for where and what we might have been.

“Haunting, spare and beautiful, Jennifer Reimer’s poems invite us to examine the inmost wishes of our hearts.” ––Madeline Miller, author of Circe and The Song of Achilles

Jennifer A. Reimer Recio is Assistant Professor of American Studies and MFA Program Coordinator at Oregon State University—Cascades. She has lived in Cyprus, Turkey, Denmark, Austria, and the Basque coast. A proud native Californian, she currently lives in Bend, Oregon with her husband and The Cat Belmonte. Follow her on Instagram @jenniferareimer.

About A Story Interrupted:

Connie Soper’s first book of poetry invites readers to wander the trails of Oregon’s lush and fertile forests, and to celebrate its beaches, coastal cliffs, and headlands. She explores her native terrain with a reverence for the wild and untamed, as well as smaller moments spent in solitude. A Story Interrupted opens its map of place, memory, and inheritances—a map both familiar and uncharted. These poems offer glimpses, as well, of more distant traveled lands, always rooted in a keenly observed sense of place and belonging. These poems recall tender moments and conjure memories that connect us with our past, even if that past is sometimes difficult to acknowledge. Here, open-endedness is not melancholy but joy, each poem a small celebration.

Connie Soper is a poet and hiker who finds inspiration by walking along the beach and composing poems in her head. She is the author of a non-fiction book, Exploring the Oregon Coast Trail, and is hard at work on her second collection of poetry. She divides her time between Portland and Manzanita, Oregon.