Karen Knight

Karen Knight lives in Hobart. She has been widely published and anthologised since the 1960s, and has written four collections of poetry. The most recent, Postcards from the Asylum (Pardalote Press, 2008), won the 2005 Dorothy Hewett Flagship Fellowship Award, the 2007 ACT Alec Bolton Poetry Prize, and the University of Tasmania Prize (Tasmania Book Prizes 2011) for best book by a Tasmanian publisher. Karen Knight enjoys collaborating with other poets, musicians, and visual artists. She teamed up with Scottish writer Dilys Rose in 2006 on a long-distance poetry collection tackling the same topics from different hemispheres. This resulted in the publication Twinset (Knucker Press, Edinburgh, 2008). She has just completed a two-year project with printmaker Michael Schlitz, and is currently working on a collection of poems based on Willow Court Asylum, (1827-2000), New Norfolk, Tasmania with fellow poet Liz McQuilkin.

States of Poetry 2016 - TAS | 'Where am I?' by Karen Knight

States of Poetry Tasmania - Series One • 22 February 2016

Where am I? I am desperate for connection.I must have hit a black spot.The sun is glaring at me and blindingmy display screen.All I can see is my own face.Coarse sand has crept between my toes.I have wandered too far.I need to google a map, text someonewho will reconnect me.This shell, this sand, the smell of rotting kelp.I poke at dead things with pieces of driftwood.This strange salty w ... (read more)

States of Poetry 2016 - TAS | 'Atonement' by Karen Knight

States of Poetry Tasmania - Series One • 22 February 2016

Atonement I This clutch of buildingshas long diedbut the ghosts are still heretrying to find heartbeats. We need to liethe mirrors downand take a hammerto them. Make a mandalaout of all thisscratchedand crazed glass. This place needsto be blessedbefore the ghosts reachbreaking point. We need to mend things. II The Beauty of Numbers On a corner wall of The Barracksa ... (read more)

States of Poetry 2016 - TAS | 'Casualties' by Karen Knight

States of Poetry Tasmania - Series One • 22 February 2016

Casualties (Willow Court Asylum, 1827-2000, New Norfolk, Tasmania) Squatting in the bitumenby the old mortuarysuckering weedsof blackberry. Around the hemof the exercise yardruntish holly. Under the scum and stenchof the Frescati pondrotting water ribbonsand frogs. An ash saplingtunnelling too faris trapped in the pipeline. Wisteria and ivyin a race to the high wallhave growth-spurte ... (read more)