Rikki Santer

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Rikki Santer’s poetry has been published widely and has received many honors, including Pushcart and Ohioana book award nominations, support from the Ohio Arts Council and the Greater Columbus Arts Council, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 2023, she was named Ohio Poet of the Year, and in 2026, she will be artist-in-residence of the Fran Ryan Center in Columbus, Ohio. She is a member of the teaching artist roster of the Ohio Arts Council, the poetry troupe Concrete Wink, and a past vice-president of the Ohio Poetry Association. She has had published seven full-length poetry collections and seven chapbook sequences exploring such topics as the Hopewell earthworks of Newark, Ohio; the late Kahiki Supper Club of Columbus, Ohio; the art of ventriloquism, the complex world of fashion, and the TV series Twilight Zone. Her collection, Resurrection Letter, dedicated to surrealist artist Leonora Carrington, was grand prize short-listed for the Eric Hoffer Book Award, and Shepherd’s Hour won the Paul Nemser Book Prize from Lily Poetry Review Books. Please contact her through her website https://rikkisanter.com

ABOUT THE BOOK:

In Could Be, her fifteenth collection, award-winning poet Rikki Santer takes us on an eclectic journey through the challenges of motherhood, the playful ironies of pop culture, and the current conditions of our country and planet. With her signature passion for the gymnastics and surprises of language, many of these poems tether onto each other with the positivity of resilience––steadfast belief in a hopeful state of could be.

ADVANCE PRAISE:

Rikki Santer’s Could Be is a gutsy collection of poems imbued with an artful precision of sophistication and panache. The poems are both intellectually and emotionally stirring, meticulously written and maybe even more importantly, a much-needed wakeup call from an unbound voice addressing the broken world we all live in right now, a world lost in grids of empty faces / the corkscrew of cable news as coral reefs surrender / their rainbows and we prepare / our farewells to big ice. Plan to sit for a while, reader, you will not be able to put this book down.

––Kari Gunter-Seymour, Ohio Poet Laureate, author of Dirt Songs

Rikki Santer’s Could Be is a true act of creation. It is a deluge of sound and Santer’s unique sensibilities. Could Be surprises and engages with words like “flimflammery,” “clockablock,” and “skronky.” Santer releases us from the “pluck and tuck of retelling” as she explores the detached surreal reality of the present day: images of the internet and mega department stores are juxtaposed with birds and ants and the precise natural landscape of central Ohio. In this collection, Santer makes it clear that, “miracles / arise from the mundane.” These poems, though, are by no means mundane. They are epic, sensory, and lush. They directly address both the personal and political reality of being an American woman, a mother, a daughter, and a wife, challenging the signification of each role. These poems defy traditional modes of meaning-making for something wholly original.

––Sara Moore Wagner, author of Lady Wing Shot,
managing poetry editor at Driftwood Press

Rikki Santer’s new collection Could Be, is a masterful balance of both experiences seemingly bereft of hope, and those revealing portals of light that nudge the reader firmly into otherwise. Yet near the book’s beginning, in the poem “Childhood Gothic,” Santer also offers a foundation, a lesson rooted in resilience: “Down the street where I grew up, lived an elderly neighbor who adored bones. Her guest / room was a playground for memories of flesh,” and at the poem’s conclusion, “…It was then I was schooled in the delights of uncanny and for what’s left / over when the future comes after you. She’d tell me to listen for angels that come down / from their ladders. I’d nod and whisper into every eye hole.” Therein lie tangible bones of loss, with light filtering in from each eye hole.

Throughout Could Be, despair waltzes in tandem with redemption: “Sometimes we are whimpering wounds” but “ancient mercies linger.” There are moments when a page aches but never is there a line of resignation––“when I say I don’t know anything anymore I mean the compass / is confused by its own magnetism, road ahead or road behind? / and when I say magnetism I mean the safety lock forgot / its password and all words have passed their expiration dates / but I do hold a key, many thanks…”

Could Be is a triumph. Like Santer’s other collections, this book challenges and dazzles the reader’s mind with stunning images and unique turns of language. Epiphanies are abundant throughout. Rikki Santer is a virtuoso with every poem she undertakes.

––Sandra Feen; 2022-2024 Ohio Beat Poet Laureate,
author of Evidence of Starving

Those familiar with Rikki Santer’s poetry will know her to be a word wizard, one who conjures fresh, clever imagery and sound to cast a spell on the reader. In her latest collection, Could Be, Santer again applies these talents to address the powerlessness we feel in our struggles to face darkness and its evolution, both personal and communal. From the “dark loop of dementia” to the “corrosive syllables of bulldozer and chainsaw” to “family dinners with thorns in the pudding,” no experience is off limits. Santer deftly journeys between past, present, and future, exploring familiar themes of loss––and our memory of it––and hope, and how they imprint themselves on “the parchment of humankind.” She offers suggestions, if not solutions, for finding comfort in the natural world, the salve of nostalgia, and “the oldest songs on our planet.” More importantly, Santer reminds us of the unexpected angels we can rely on to help us sift through the “bitter archives of human failings” that litter our relationships and to discover the potential of our better selves.

––Chuck Salmons, author of Surviving the Eremocene