My Books

Goddess Wears Cowboy Boots

Published by Lamar University Press
September, 2014
available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble
WINNER OF THE 2015 TEXAS INSTITUTE OF LETTERS HELEN C. SMITH PRIZE

 Advance Praise:

"Katherine Hoerth writes poems that lovers of poetry will admire, fans of stories will enjoy, and poets will find astonishing for the poetic mastery in the integration of form and meaning"

-- Jerry Craven, author of Woman of Thunder and publisher of Lamar University Press

"Ripe with carefully constructed rhythms amidst the free verse, memorable imagery and deft, assured wordplay,Goddess Wears Cowboy Boots is the work of a poet who’s fully come in to her own. You’ll want to visit this temple again and again."

-- David Bowles, author of Flower, Song, Dance and Shattering and Bricolage

"Nothing pretentious here, just good poetry." -- From an Amazon customer! :-)

Read a detailed review here


The Garden, Uprooted

Published by Slough Press, July 2012

Available at:

Barnes and Noble

Amazon 

Advance Praise for The Garden, Uprooted:

"With her deft, sensuous, jaunty, and vital poems Katie Hoerth makes a smart debut in The Garden Uprooted. From “How To Marry a Prince” to "Breakfast with Fur" to “Not the Sonnet You Dream Of,” the poet mixes fairy tale images with visceral descriptions in this sexy—and crafted—first book that keeps turning preconceptions inside out."

 Molly Peacock, author of The Paper Garden and The Second Blush

Ripeness is all” in these poems where mangoes, melons, and pomegranates redden and fall into the dry soil of south Texas to be eaten, to rot, or to bury their seeds. Against this lush and fertile backdrop, a clear-eyed gringa elopes on her eighteenth birthday with a Mexican native old enough to be her father, whom she envisions as catching her before she too can hit the dirt and spoil. That backstory is the only part of this collection not set in the sensual present moment, where the juices of burst fruit and kisses and the lyrical Spanish language seep into poems meant to be savored on the reader’s tongue. The Garden, Uprooted is a debut collection from a young poet to watch."

Julie Kane, Lousiana Poet Laureate and author of Jazz Funeral and Rhythm and Booze

"Finding a home, putting down roots without suffering “root shock,” knowing and accepting who you are, and finding ways to be accepted by others, these are difficult tasks, especially if you are a transplant from Sheboygan living and writing in the Rio Grande Valley. Katherine Hoerth's poems show the way, her personal way, and they do it with grace and honesty. She understands what we must all learn—what it means to be human."

   Robert S. Nelsen, President of the University of Texas Pan American

“The Garden, Uprooted is a fall into love, with all the trepidation and exhilaration of your first parachute jump. These poems are a sumptuous feast. They will fulfill your longing for pleasure. "

 Steven Schneider, author of Prairie Air Show, Unexpected Guests, and Borderlines

The Garden, Uprooted is a hypnotic burlesque dance, a garden frenzy of delights...And yet, the truth is here too, revealed in bursting metamorphoses and greatly impacted by the gradually seen and unseen realities of South Texas. It is because the poet is a Northern tree in foreign soil that the Texas-Mexico border so evocatively demands that she, like other border-dwellers, eternally ask, 'Who am I?' and 'Where do I belong?'

Ire’ne lara silva, author of furia


Among the Mariposas

1st edition currently available, but not for long! This title will be going into its second edition very soon. Check back for information on the updated, second edition.

Chapbook, $7.00, available directly through the publisher, Mouthfeel Press. Click image above!

Cover Art by Michael Finacune

In Among the Mariposas, Katherine Hoerth emerges as an authentic new poetic voice in the Rio Grande Valley. She is both an insider and outsider in this predominantly Mexican-American region, embracing the local culture even as she feels edgy about her place within it. Her poetry holds up a mirror to the lyrical beauty of the Tex-Mex border and the muddy waters that run through it. The smell of tortillas and the juice of watermelons fill these pages with the vibrancy of life

!--
Steven P. Schneider, Unexpected Guests and Borderlines: Drawing Border Lives

In these sensitive and sensory poems of experience and witness, Katherine Hoerth writes of “being only halfway / there”– halfway between the home of the past and the home of the present, halfway between the culture of the borderlands and striving to “blend” and “belong.” Neither here nor there, the poet is not afraid to write with an emotional honesty that is also perceptive of economic disparities: “the barn called city hall,” “a virgin’s veil of colonias,” and “children who / grow numb long / before they grow / tall.” These are the borderlands of hope and walls, and giving up at times, but not “say[ing] goodbye.

”--

Emmy Perez, Solstice

The Garden of Dresses (Mouthfeel Press, 2012) -- Katie's second chapbook!

 

Available at:

http://www.mouthfeelpress.com

Praise for The Garden of Dresses:

Katherine Hoerth’s poems in The Garden of Dresses are readings of Adam and Eve, buying fruit at a market, Little Red Riding Hood, kissing, spring, and other experiences. The world is seen through a sensual and sexual lens. The poems reach for the language that explodes in your mouth, like when eating a toronja and, with each bite, appreciating how its flesh is so much more than just the pulp.

The Garden of Dresses is the sexual awakening not only of the speaker(s), but of objects, characters, places. Katherine’s poems relentlessly make the readers come up close to the images, and, more than read the poems, they savor them.

Laura Cesarco Eglin, author or Llamar al agua por su nombre (Mouthfeel Press, 2010) and Sastria (Yauguru Press, 2012)







For information on how to purchase autographed copies of any title, Katie directly at KatherineHoerth@gmail.com