In her ninth collection of poems, Ghost Apples, Katharine Coles interrogates and celebrates her relationship with the natural world and the various creatures who inhabit it, and in doing so asks what it means to be sentient and mortal on a fragile planet. From her own pet parrot, Henri, to the birds her husband attracts to their feeders, to the wildlife who live just outside—and regularly cross—her property on the wild edge of Salt Lake City, she uses her capacity for intense observation and meditation to think her way into other lives and possible shared futures, both good and bad.
Katharine Coles is the author of two novels, nine collections of poems, the essay collection The Stranger I Become, and the memoir Look Both Ways. The recipient of grants from the NEA, the NEH, and the Guggenheim Foundation, she has served as Poet Laureate of Utah and was inaugural director of the Poetry Foundation’s Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute. She is a distinguished professor of English at the University of Utah.
