Kristin Bock grew up in the small farm town of Woodbury, CT. She holds a B.A. in English Literature from Southern Connecticut State University, and an MFA in poetry from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst where she teaches. Her poems have appeared in many literary magazines and journals, including Columbia, The Seattle Review, Prairie Schooner, The Black Warrior Review, and FENCE. She lives with her husband, artist Geoffrey Kostecki, in Montague, MA, where they refurbish religious murals and sculptural iconography in churches throughout New England. Bock is a contributing editor to the literary magazine Bateau, and a 2006 Massachusetts Cultural Council fellow.

Books by Kristin Bock:

Other poems on the web by Kristin Bock:
"Return"

About Cloisters:

"Kristin Bock’s marvelous debut collection enacts an aesthetic of discrete moments, offering her reader an intelligence that works simultaneously upon the heart and at the margins of experience. The perspective here is edgy, nervous, compelling, and wise. In the pared delicacy of these poems, we discover both exceptional nuance and resonance—these are poems that trust their readers, poems that don’t oversell their emotions or perceptions. Kristin Bock’s poems are like the shards of a mirror that magically reflect a whole person, a whole woman, a whole mind and sensibility at work in the world. As in all of the best volumes of poetry, we come to admire the person in these poems, her vision and her character."
—David St. John

"Poetry comes unbidden and it comes by design, with desire. Bock's book catches poetry as it holds our attention so that we remember why we go looking for what poetry offers in the first place. I love this book's adamant attentions and unashamed ardors. When she writes, `And who records such things?' we know it is, for one, the poet who's written Cloisters"
—Dara Wier

"Kristin Bock’s poems are original and always surprising. Images are chiseled with great care, each word chosen with exacting particularity. Though most poems are short, they add up to a powerful vision. I love this book."
—James Tate