Kieron Walquist: Our Hands Hold Violence

Local poet Kieron Walquist will be here at Under the Umbrella reading from his poetry debut and National Poetry Series Winning book Our Hands Hold Violence, and signing copies afterwards.

• Tickets are required. There is a limited number of free tickets available.
• Book ticket includes a copy of the book. Please pick up your book at the event.
• If you can't attend, but would still like a copy of the book signed, please contact Under the Umbrella.

This venue is wheelchair accessible, and masks are required and provided. ASL interpretation can be provided with 2 weeks advance notice. Please reach out with any accessibility needs.

About Our Hands Hold Violence:

A NATIONAL POETRY SERIES WINNER SELECTED AND WITH A FOREWORD BY BRENDA HILLMAN

A collection of poems that explores rural Missouri, violence, queer desire / intimacy, addiction, familial and wildlife relationships.

Through encounters with the everyday beauty and brutality so much a part of rural and urban Missouri, Our Hands Hold Violence explores what it means to experience and/or perpetuate small and significant acts of violence, toward others and the self.

What does it mean to hunt (be hunted), haunt (be haunted), and other (be othered)? Abiding by a chronological arc told in four movements (HERE, THERE, TOGETHER, ALONE), Our Hands Hold Violence follows the speaker(s) as they come up in the Show Me State and come to terms with queerness, mental disability, addiction, and loneliness in the largely Christian, conservative, and hyper-masculine landscape. Other themes / aspects of note include familial dynamics, estrangement, labor, neglected and decaying natures, waste, and the confluence of wildlife and mankind.

Comprised of traditional forms and modes such as the abecedarian, ekphrasis, sestina, and more hybrid configurations (billboards, bullet points, McDonald’s Monopoly stickers), as well as photographs, Our Hands Hold Violence is interested, too, in changing/challenging structure and expectations. Thus, enacting a visual and figurative “violence” upon the page. Additionally, 2 poems are contained in a nonce (invented) form called “Shakes,” where strophes traverse between left and right points, while the middle column is constructed or cataloged by similar sounds—a form inspired by the author’s own reality of stimming (i.e. pacing) and echolalia.

Our Hands Hold Violence indulges in alliteration, assonance, repetition, and a colloquial registry of language. The voice(s) in the poems can range from anxious, reflective (nostalgic), sensual, and tender, but all are compelled by and circle the manuscript’s themes, which become obsessions. Hauntings. Ultimately, Our Hands Hold Violence is a collection troubled by the desire to belong to/in a place and to beloveds that have “been home” while, in ways, “feeling like an outsider” at home and within one’s local community.

About Kieron Walquist:

Kieron Walquist (he/they) is a queer neurospicy poet + visual artist from mid-Missouri. Their work appears in Best New Poets, Gulf Coast, IHLR, The Missouri Review, Pleiades, Poet Lore, Third Coast, Waxwing, + elsewhere. Their chapbook, Love Locks, was selected by Luther Hughes for the 2022 Quarterly West Chapbook Contest. He holds a BA from Lincoln University of Missouri, an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis, and has received fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center, Monson Arts, and Vermont Studio Center. He is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Utah and lives in Salt Lake City.

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