A Bit Left of Straight Ahead is an exploration-a journey within journey-born from Kim Peter Kovac's eclectic knowledge and his free-form imagination. The poems are inhabited by poets, painters, musicians, action figures, fairy tale characters, myths, historical persons, who venture across time and geography to places such as Andalusia, Romania, Robben Island, Sarajevo, Wadi Rum, Okinawa, and Saturn.
Kovac has created a tapestry of magical realism, time-shifts, stylistic variety, and non-linearity that is woven with interludes of humor, philosophy, whimsy, and music. His poems explore reconciliation through communion with the past; critique notions of mental health, war, and "othering" people; and cast a quirky yet truthful eye on the zeitgeist.
Early Praise:
"A Bit Left of Straight Ahead is an act of neural cartography; a vibrant creative force...a delightful, sprawling collection that rewards being read many times over."
-Sandra Beasley, author of Made to Explode
"Masterful for its panoramic humanity and theatrically charged verbal wit, A Bit Left of Straight Ahead is a glorious collection of lyrical verse...mind-bogglingly imaginative..."
-Regie Cabico, Nuyoircan Poets Cafe Grand Slam Champion, author of A Rabbit in Search of a Rolex
"...takes the reader on magical musings...to experience percussive, lyrical worlds."
-Hélène Cardona, award-winning author of Life in Suspension and Dreaming My Animal Selves
"A Bit Left of Straight Ahead provides new angles on that which I thought I'd seen, including even my own memories."
-Idris Goodwin, Breakbeat poet & playwright
"[P]lease steep yourself in these poems and the liminal, limitless spaces they offer."
-Maria Nazos, author of PULSE, translator of The Slow Horizon that Breathes
"Kovac is a master of finding where the mundane and the magical converge."
-Karen Zacarias, playwright, author of Native Gardens and Destiny of Desire
Kim Peter Kovac began writing poetry in 2012, toward the end of his career in national and international theater for young audiences (TYA), starting work on his first Poetry Barn asynchronous online workshop on the plane home from a festival in Okinawa, just barely beating a typhoon.He has commissioned and produced 100+ new TYA plays and musicals as Artistic Director of Kennedy Center Theater for Young Audiences, including from Pulitzer Prize and Tony award winning playwrights and composers.Kim co-founded and co-produced (with Deirdre Kelly Lavrakas) the Kennedy Center's New Visions/New Voices, an award-winning program that assisted in the development of 111 new plays, musicals, and operas from 97 playwrights and 38 composers, working with 61 U.S. and 12 international theater companies. He spent 12 years on the governing board of ASSITEJ, the international TYA association, with national centers in 80+ countries, and currently works as part of the leadership team and webmaster for Write Local Play Global, the international network for writers of new work for young audiences, with members in 50+ countries.Kim's first poetry collection, Border Sounds: Poem & Dispatches from Other Timezones, was published in January 2021. He also has 150+ pieces in print and online in journals from Australia, Bangladesh, England, India, Ireland, Korea, Poland, Scotland, Singapore, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, and the USA. He has a BA in Theatre from Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA, an MFA in Theatre Directing from the University of Texas at Austin and is a Fellow of the College of Fellows of the American Theatre.Website: kimpeterkovac.com
