Kathleen Balmais the author of From Your Hostess at the T&A Museum (Black Spring Press Group 2022). Her poems have been included in Best New Poets, the Pushcart Prize Anthology, the Montreal International Poetry Prize Anthology, and many other publications. She is the recipient of a Fulbright grant, a fellowship at Rivendell Writers' Colony, and scholarships for Sewanee Writers' Conference and Bread Loaf Environmental Writers' Conference. She works at New Orleans Public Library.

Books by Kathleen Balma:

Other poems on the web by Kathleen Balma:
"Dead Cardinal"
"Salmon Shreds in Gravy"
"Snubbed: A Motion-Picture Ekphrasis"
Two poems
"Jaybirds"
"Sonnet after Watching Blue Planet II"
"Poem Poem Poem Poem Poem"
Two poems
"Dead Cardinal"

Kathleen Balma's Website.

Kathleen Balma on Twitter.

About From Your Hostess At The T&A Museum:

"In Kathleen Balma's first full-length collection, intelligent soybeans plot to take over the Midwest, ghosts seek out psychoanalysis, embryonic Abraham Lincolns design their cabin home, and baby snub-nosed monkeys live out a lyrical and heartbreaking soap opera. Witty, fresh, whimsical and musical, From Your Hostess At The T&A Museum is one of those very rare feats, poems of both thought and song, a beguilement of both intellect and ear. I found it a joyride from beginning to end, a thoroughly smart and rewarding debut; Balma is a poet I hope to follow for years to come."
—Hailey Leithauser

"Kathleen Balma's debut poetry collection is a marvelous concoction steeped in myth, nostalgia, humor, and the chimerical. Sirens are juxtaposed with Dreamsicles, John Wayne rides in on a John Deere tractor, and Brigadoon and Salvador Dalí are saluted in a poem about stopping time. Punctuated with startling similes like Abe Lincoln as a "Christmas specter," Balma's book is "a complex amalgam of positive and negative" imagery, shining with both wit and wonder."
—Simone Muench

"A ghost needs an audience or it is pointless," writes Balma, and the same can be said about poets. "But does a ghost need a point?" she continues. No. Does a poet? Jeez, I hope not! Poems are toys, not vitamin pills, and these are full of playfulness. They're also full of contradictions (see "Revelation at the Invisible Gun Show"), because between the contra- and the diction is where the poem is found. I won't tell you what "the best sad thing that's happened to me all year" is, but it's a doozy. Read on, reader, and let Kathleen Balma free your mind."
—David Kirby

"A charming and refreshing collection that kindles the imagination … Balma knows how to keep readers engaged. From Your Hostess at the T&A Museum provides a "paws-on education" along with a loving look at perception and desire"
—Audrey Davis