retribution forthcoming
Winner of the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, finalist for an Ohio Book Award in poetry, longlisted for the Julie Suk Award.
In the lineage of New York School poets like Alice Notley and Bernadette Mayer, retribution forthcoming does its exploratory work through narrative and lyric modes, by simile and catalogue. By turns oblique and direct, Katie Berta’s poems look vulnerably and honestly at sexual coercion and the psychological fallout of assault. These poems move through academic, public, and domestic spaces—and through the domain of memory—investigating the ways consumerist society reinforces and reifies gender conformity and performativity. The world of these poems and their trauma narrative is woven through and deepened by the heartful speaker’s sense of humor and eagerness to love and trust.
recent news
01 — My second book, collective, won the Iowa Poetry Prize!
I am honored that my second book, collective, was selected by Brenda Shaughnessy as one of the winners of the Iowa Poetry Prize. Of it, she said: “These poems are so profound the mind hurls them, resounding in the body. ‘I will not be absorbed’ is a line in a body of work I’ll never forget—I call on it to give me resolve and strength to continue insisting on human consciousness’s right to continually stretch, recalibrate, and imagine a new a new music, for its own survival. The whole book and its constitutive iotas remind us that each individual mind is capable of breathing whole worlds into existence. But what this poet breathes is life itself—self itself as connect-ion and continuance—in a cosmos of selves. This book isn’t made of paper, it’s made of hinge, fore-edge, and ocular field.” I am so grateful to Shaughnessy and to the editors at University of Iowa Press for selecting this manuscript, which will appear in spring 2027.
02 — Three new poems in The Georgia Review
I’m so excited to have three new poems in the summer issue of The Georgia Review. Thank you so much to the editorial team at The Georgia Review for all the important work they do.
03 — Two new poems in DIAGRAM
Thanks so much to DIAGRAM editors for including my poems, “House Un-American Activities Committee” and “Brief Genius” in this gorgeous issue.
04 — Read my review of Prageeta Sharma’s new Onement Won in the L.A. Review of Books
Prageeta Sharma’s newest poetry collection is stunning in its complexity. Thanks to the team at L.A. Review of Books for publishing my take.
05 — New poem in The Rumpus
Thank you to the editors of The Rumpus for including my poem, “Imprecision,” among so many writers I admire.
Read it here.Shaughnessy
