Wyatt Townley Book Launch: Rewriting The Body

Former Kansas poet laureate Wyatt Townley launches her new book of poems, REWRITING THE BODY.

ABOUT THE BOOK: The body is a poem we rewrite with every breath. Poet Laureate of Kansas Emerita Wyatt Townley, who in her dual life has taught yoga for decades, explores the body as
place—as home—leading us from room to room, from
trauma to revelation. Here is kinetic wordplay in a range of forms—free verse to pattern poem to villanelle, anchored by the long title poem at the end. While elegiac, the book is salted through with humor and lands squarely on the side of life.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:  Wyatt Townley is the 4th Poet Laureate of Kansas. In her two-year term as poet laureate, she travelled 10,000 miles giving programs across Kansas and edited a weekly poetry column, "HomeWords," syndicated in newspapers statewide.

Her books include four collections of poetry: Rewriting the Body (new), The Breathing Field, Perfectly Normal, and The Afterlives of Trees, a Kansas Notable Book and winner of the Nelson Award.

Her work has been read by Garrison Keillor on NPR, featured in US Poet Laureate Ted Kooser's "American Life in Poetry," and published in venues ranging from The Paris Review to Newsweek.

The confluence of poetry and poetry-in-motion has shaped Wyatt's life. A former dancer turned yoga teacher, she has written books on both subjects and is the founder of Yoganetics®, a therapeutic system practiced in ten countries. Her book on the method was named an "Editor's Choice" by Yoga Journal. For years a dance critic for Dance Magazine and The Kansas City Star, Wyatt was commissioned to write the commemorative history, Kansas City Ballet: The First Fifty Years.

Her mission remains two-fold: to bring people home to poetry and poetry home to people.

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