All That Teethes Within: An Evening with Kari Gunter-Seymour

In All That Teethes Within, poet Kari Gunter-Seymour translates the poignant complexity of loss into words. This exploration of heartache is layered with the poet's Appalachian identity and overflows with sadness and anger toward the forces that cause societal and environmental damage in the region. The poems mourn a loved one's sudden passing, opportunity missed due to poverty or gender inequality, and the piece of one's identity that vanishes or fades with age. Gunter-Seymour's interrogation of grief and destruction quietly weaves in elements of nature—"Breezes whistle like wisps of memory / inside clusters of hemlock"—to counter profound pain. Small joys found in friendship, the land, grandchildren, and wildlife round out this collection. All That Teethes Within reckons with the incomprehensible reality of a sibling's suicide, serving as a guide for survival and a call to speak the truth of our anguish and our rapture.
6 pm reception/6:30 pm program
Free & open to the public. Registration required.
Copies of All That Teethes Within will be available for sale & signing.
About Kari Gunter-Seymour
Kari Gunter-Seymour is the immediate past Poet Laureate of Ohio, a ninth generation Appalachian and author of four award-winning poetry collections, including All That Teethes Within (University Press of Kentucky 2026) and Dirt Songs (EastOver Press, 2024). She is the winner of the 2025 IPPY Bronze Award, NY Big Book Award, Feathered Quill Award and National Federation of Press Women Award. She is the executive director of the Women of Appalachia Project and editor of its anthology series, Women Speak. Gunter-Seymour holds writing workshops for incarcerated adults and women in recovery, is a retired instructor in the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University and the founder, curator, and host of “Spoken & Heard”; a seasonal performance series featuring poets, writers, and musicians from across the country. She is the editor of I Thought I Heard A Cardinal Sing: Ohio’s Appalachian Voices, funded through the Academy of American Poets and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She was selected to serve as a 2022 Dodge Poetry Festival Poet and is a Pillars of Prosperity Fellow for the Foundation for Appalachian Ohio. Her work has been featured in World Literature Today, American Book Review, Poem-a-Day, The New York Times, and Katie Curic’s Wake Up Call.