Join us for an evening of poetry with Bend poets Irene Cooper and Jennifer Reimer presenting their latest collections spare change and Keske.

About spare change:

Of spare change, Malcom Tariq, 2022 Oregon Book Award judge for the Stafford/Hall prize for poetry said,  "With spare change, Irene Cooper unravels the layers of grief that accompany death. These poems witness and reflect. They mourn, but rarely do they lean into an expected sentimentality. Instead, there is a tenderness here that allows the past to interrogate a present and a future. The beauty of this book is that there is no one story, and there are several truths. Cooper brilliantly demonstrates the continuum of life, death, and the traces of ourselves we will all leave behind."

Author bio:

Irene Cooper is the author of the novel Found, finalist for a Next Generation Indie Book Award, Committal, poet-friendly spy-fy about family, & spare change, finalist for the Stafford/Hall Award for poetry. Writings appear in Denver Quarterly, The Feminist Wire, The Rumpus, streetcake, Witness, & elsewhere. Irene supports AIC-directed creative writing at a regional prison, teaches in the MFA program at OSU-Cascades, is co-founder and instructor for The Forge online creative writing program, & currently serves as an editor for Airlie Press. Irene lives with her people & Maggie in Oregon. Find her at irenecooperwrites.com.

About Keske:

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.

Author Bio:

Jennifer A. Reimer, Assistant Professor of American Studies and MFA Program Coordinator at Oregon State University—Cascades, received her PhD in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Berkeley and her MFA in Writing from the University of San Francisco. She has numerous scholarly and creative publications. As a scholar, Jennifer writes about poetry, race, gender, and migration. She is the author of The Rainy Season Diaries (Quale Press, 2013) and Keşke (Airlie Press, 2022). The Turkish translation of The Rainy Season Diaries was released by Şiirden Press (Istanbul) in 2017. As kindergarten classroom aide, academic, writer, and freelance editor, Jennifer has lived and worked in Cyprus, Turkey, Denmark, Austria, Spain and France. She currently lives in Bend. Follow her on Instagram @jenniferareimer.

“Haunting, spare and beautiful, Jennifer Reimer’s poems invite us to examine the inmost wishes of our hearts.”