skin prayers

Collection Contents

#		Title	Length
1		Her, at Two	1:45	Play
2		After Years	0:54	Play
3		On Punctuation	1:43	Play
4		In Praise of Orality	0:52	Play
5		Epithalamion	1:09	Play
6		Accessory	0:43	Play
7		Girl of Twenty-Five	0:55	Play
8		House Fire	1:14	Play
9		Ebbing Hour	0:55	Play
10		Hotel Love	1:18	Play
11		Deciduous	1:00	Play
12		How the End Begins	0:39	Play
13		For You, First Through the Door	1:01	Play
14		Marks By Which I Know Myself	0:23	Play
15		Brother	1:00	Play
16		False Spring	0:35	Play
17		Prayer for Relief	1:16	Play
18		What Do I Do With This Persistent Begging	0:37	Play
19		Between Floors	1:50	Play
20		Consequence	1:14	Play
21		Despite the Days I've Slept	2:16	Play
22		There Will Be No Introduction	1:09	Play
23		The Permanent Fragility of Meaning	1:22	Play
24		Handmade	1:29	Play
25		Snapshot at the End	1:38	Play
26		This Morning	1:59	Play

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Description

...Of course, Elizabeth Austen's poems are a pleasure to readin her hands, the page is a marvelous place: the white wilderness where the various animals of the alphabet reveal themselves, their fine shapes, their clear and complex interrelations, and the range of epiphany their movements make possible. But it is the physical voice of the poet that reveals the invisible body of each word, the sonic body, the thing that actually touches the ear. The pleasure of Elizabeth's poems is, surely, in their thoughtfulness, in their deceptively quiet pursuit of food worthy of the head and heart, but these poems also exist as a type of music, as the song of one person speaking carefully to another. Inasmuch as the melody beneath a phrase of blues supports and magnifies what feels true to the singer, human speech with its rises and falls, pauses and precise inflections, also adds to our grasp of what's what to the poet. This is a truly engagingperhaps enchantedcollection of poems, and the living fact of Elizabeth Austen's voice is good news for the world. - Tim Seibles, author of Buffalo Head Solos

Elizabeth Austen is a Seattle-based poet, performer and teacher.

Through my early thirties, I worked as an actor, vocal coach and director with companies including Book-It Repertory Theatre, On the Boards and the Seattle Shakespeare Festival, as well as companies in Michigan, Montana, New Jersey and London, England. I trained as a classical actor and vocal coach at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, and studied history, literature and philosophy at University College, London.
After six months solo travel in the Andes region of South America, I redirected my creative energies to writing poetry. Poet Alexandra Thurman describes my poems as offering "meditations, both discursive and lyrical, on the intersection between the political, the spiritual, and the sacraments of the everyday."

You'll find my poems in the anthologies Poets Against the War, Pontoon, Weathered Pages and in the Bellingham Review, Swivel, and the South African journal Carapace, among others. I've performed at Pacific Northwest venues including the Bumbershoot Arts Festival, Seattle Poetry Festival and the Skagit River Poetry Festival. I've received fellowships from Jack Straw Productions, Hedgebrook and the Vermont Studio Center, and my poems have been nominated for a Pushcart prize.

Since 2001, I've produced literary programming for KUOW 94.9, one of Seattles NPR affiliates. Tune in to "The Beat" on Monday afternoons at 2 p.m. to hear commentaries on readings by local and national authors. You can also hear these segments via KUOW's Web site, www.kuow.org.

I earned an MFA in Creative Writing at Antioch University-Los Angeles in 2001, and have taught for several years in the Inquiry Through Writing program at Richard Hugo House, a literary arts center in Seattle. I've been a visiting artist for the Anacortes, La Conner, Mount Vernon, Seattle and Sedro Woolley, Washington school districts, and for the Austin, Texas ArtSpark Festival. I've led workshops for Burning Word, Highline Community College, Poets in the Park, Puget Sound Writers Program and the Washington Center for the Book. I teach Reading to Sustain Your Writing Life privately in the Seattle area, and earn my living as a communications specialist at Childrens Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle.