University of Nebraska Press author Elizabeth Dodd has been named this week’s featured poet for the Ad Astra (To the Stars) Poetry Project, a biweekly online column that features a prominent Kansas poet and their work. Dr. Denise Low, Poet Laureate of Kansas, researches and compiles each feature to help make the poet’s work available for educational and personal use across the state. She expresses that this program is meant to share her enthusiasm for historic and contemporary poets who reside or have resided in Kansas for a substantial part of their lives. Read this week’s post on Dr. Low’s blog, which includes Elizabeth’s poem, Lyric.

In addition to her poetry, Elizabeth has written several books of nonfiction. Her most recent book newly published in September, In the Mind’s Eye: Essays across the Animate World, is a collection of exquisite essays in which Elizabeth explores the natural and human history of sites in the American Southwest, the caves of southern France, the Kansas grasslands, and the forests of the Pacific Northwest. In the Mind’s Eye recently earned praise from several major book review publications, including Publishers Weekly, ForeWord Magazine, and Booklist Magazine. Read a portion of Aline Soules’s review from ForeWord:

"The joy is in the author’s depth of thought, her poetic descriptions, the jumbling together of images, and the sense she makes out of all these elements. In spite of the meditative nature of the material, the writing is conversational and immediate, and each essay can stand alone, allowing readers to explore this book one essay at a time, taking visual and mental "bites." It’s a good read anytime—summer on the patio or winter by the fire."

To learn more about Elizabeth and her writing, visit www.elizabethdodd.com.