Kirsten Ihns

Kirsten Ihns studies how long works of contemporary poetry and film choreograph patterns of perceptual switches toward form. She is interested in how these works develop formal insights usually considered through an art historical lens, and in what new affordances arise at the intersection of language and the visual in long forms. She is also a poet, filmmaker, and event curator. Her first book, sundaey, was published in 2020. She earned her MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Teaching-Writing Fellow, and has also studied Visual Art at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (now part of Tufts University). Her B.A. degrees are in Biological Sciences and English Literature from the University of Chicago.

Dissertation Title: Aspect Choreography: Perceptual Rhythms in Long Form Poetry and Film (1970-2020). Committee: Bill Brown, Sianne Ngai, Edgar Garcia

• sundaey (Propeller Books, 2020) 
• Individual poems appear or are forthcoming in Hyperallergic, jubilat, Fence, The Canary, Bennington Review, Black Warrior Review, TAGVVERK, The Iowa Review, Can We Have Our Ball Back? and elsewhere 
• Reviews in Denver Quarterly and Chicago Review 
• Interviews with Kenyon Review about sundaey, with Black Warrior Review for 2016 poetry contest, judged by Hoa Nguyen

• Poetry Editor, Chicago Review Summer 2021- 
• Co-founder/Co-curator the cclouds artist talk and reading series (2018- 
• Curator/Organizer, Poetry & Poetics Workshop at the University of Chicago (2019- 
• Managing Editor, Chicago Review 2019-2020

Freestanding Courses 

• Spring 2022: Framework, Repetition, Recognition: Experimental Poetry and Film 1909-2019, University of Chicago 
• Spring 2017: Undergraduate Writers’ Workshop, University of Iowa 
• Fall 2016: Poetry Writing, University of Iowa 
• 2015-2016: General Education in Literature, University of Iowa 

Course Assistantships and Preceptorships 

• Spring 2021: CAship: Black Shakespeare 
• Fall 2020: CAship: The World’s a Stage: Performance in Politics, Culture, and Everyday Life 
• Winter 2020: CAship: Introduction to Poetry: Rhythm and Myth 
• 2018-2020: Graduate Preceptor for Creative Writing BA Theses 
• 2010-2012: T.A. for multiple undergraduate biology courses at the University of Chicago