In No One’s Land

Paige Ackerson-Kiely

Selected for the 2006 Sawtooth Poetry Prize by D.A. Powell

An extended bio from the author

 

I was born in Biddeford, Maine, at the behest of my parents in October of 1975. I grew up on the coast and also in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire, which boasts one of the largest congregations of bikers each June.

I rambled around a bit in my early twenties, attended Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin; Marmara University in Istanbul; Birzeit University in Birzeit, Palestine; and finally received a BA in Asian Studies from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. I thought I was on track to study Asylum Law, but was reorganized by youthful pregnancy and the thrum of filial responsibility. I began to write poetry when my babies were, well, babies as a way to amass privacy and some sense of independence from my role as the go-to.

In terms of professional experience I have little to show, but am looking to garner some. I tend to find comfortable, social jobs that are flexible enough to accommodate writing and my young family. I find manual labor soothing and am not above much provided it pays the bills and does not encumber the mind uselessly. Oh, and people must be kind. At present I sell wine to make ends meet and am the Writer-in-Residence for the Willowell Foundation, a local non-profit. I have also been involved with the New England Young Writers Conference at the Breadloaf Campus. Additionally, I was recently hired as a co-editor for a new poetry journal, Handsome, published by Black Ocean Press. This year I plan to use my free time to learn to skijor with my kids and our sled dog, to play Skip James pieces on the Naay, and to assist my husband, Christopher, in developing a system for prescribing literature to clients in his acupuncture practice, based on their ailment and treatment trajectory.

I am currently working on a second book of poems, loosely based on the writing of Epicurus, tentatively titled The One-Life Theory, and a novel about infanticide.