elizabeth austen

skin prayers is available in Seattle at the Elliott Bay Book Company and Open Books: a poem emporium.

Or, order skin prayers directly from the author:  $12 including shipping. E-mail elizabeth@elizabethausten.org.

Twenty-six poems recorded live at the KUOW Performance Studio in Seattle, Washington. Click on the image above to listen to sample tracks.

“…engaging poems—whose subjects range from mothers to punctuation to the habit babies have of putting everything in their mouths—are given added depth and resonance through her sensitive readings.”

–  Nancy Pearl, author of Book Lust and More Book Lust

“...Of course, Elizabeth Austen's poems are a pleasure to read—in her hands, the page is a marvelous place: the white wilderness where the various animals of the alphabet reveal themselves, their fine shapes, their clear and complex interrelations, and the range of epiphany their movements make possible. But it is the physical voice of the poet that reveals the invisible body of each word, the sonic body, the thing that actually touches the ear. The pleasure of Elizabeth's poems is, surely, in their thoughtfulness, in their deceptively quiet pursuit of food worthy of the head and heart, but these poems also exist as a type of music, as the song of one person speaking carefully to another. Inasmuch as the melody beneath a phrase of blues supports and magnifies what feels true to the singer, human speech with its rises and falls, pauses and precise inflections, also adds to our grasp of what's what to the poet. This is a truly engaging—perhaps enchanted—collection of poems, and the living fact of Elizabeth Austen's voice is good news for the world.”

                                    - Tim Seibles, author of Buffalo Head Solos