Muni Art 2021 - Jennifer Elise Foerster Poet Page

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from Lost Coast

On a treadmill by the window at 16th and De Haro
I name pigeons, high wires, green car,
blue. There must be other names
for metal boxes, electrical labyrinths
rigged across the sky. Other names
for blue. Other than sea.
Not all birds that live in the city
are pigeons. Not all are birds.
I strap myself into the rowing machine.
What an exile.
What dry land, wet air,
flowers breaking through windows.

An excerpt from Bright Raft in the Afterweather by Jennifer Elise Foerster. Copyright © 2018 Jennifer Elise Foerster. Reprinted by permission of the University of Arizona Press.

Jennifer Elise Foerster 

Headshot of Muni Art 2021 Poet Jennifer Elise Foerster

Jennifer Elise Foerster received her PhD in English and Literary Arts at the University of Denver and her MFA from the Vermont College of the Fine Arts, and is an alumna of the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, NM. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Writing Residency Fellowship, and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford. Jennifer is the author of two books of poetry, Leaving Tulsa (2013) and Bright Raft in the Afterweather (2018), both published by the University of Arizona Press. The daughter of an Air Force diplomat, Foerster grew up living internationally, is of European (German/Dutch) and Mvskoke descent, and is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma. She lives in San Francisco.

Artist Interpretations

Kundan Baidwan

Networks of lines of dots over a background of blue, white and pink. Often where the lines cross, and once when they don't, there are a group of smaller dots around a dot.

Agustina Caprioglio

Traffic lights, with red lit, crossing De Haro Street. There is a two-story building on each corner. There are telephone poles with lines going along De Haro, as well as trees and also lines with a pink dot on each end. Two birds sit on the lines. Past the far side of the intersection is a black and white mural with various people and a partially readable sign concerning voting on some issue. In the background is an abstract skyline. It is day.

John Keating

People wearing face masks, one person with a dog,cross an intersection on foot. A maskless rider crosses in the opposite direction as does a pickup truck. In the two-story black building on the far left corner, someone looks out the second-story window. Below, we see a store entrance and the end of a word: "ellence". On the far right corner is a three-story light gray building. Looking forward, we see a traffic light and a street lamp and behind that a low, long multi-story building and the top of the Salesforce tower.

Deirdre Weinberg

Red phone wires lined with red birds in front of a blue sky. There is a red building to the left and red palm trees in the background.

Wes Wellner

The upper level of a yellow stucco residence with red roof tiles having buildings on either side. There are patterned curtains in some windows, a person looking out one window and another person visible in the room through another window. There is a phone pole. In the sky there are a couple birds, a hot-air balloon, a sea gull, and an airplane.