Salvation in the vernacular: a reading with Ken Haas

**Content warning: The last poem of this episode discusses gun violence in schools. Take care while listening.** Poetry Medicine for the Soul is a podcast inviting poets to share, explore, and celebrate poetry, hosted by John Gillespie. This episode features Ken Haas. Ken reads seven of his poems: "Stone Fruit," "Speak English," "Reading at the Country Fair," "The Grill," "When Pickleball Saved the World," "The Wreck in Numbers" and "Comfort for the Ages." Ken Haas grew up in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City but has lived for 50 years now in San Francisco, where he works in healthcare. He received an AB in History and Literature at Harvard College, and received an MA in English literature at the University of Sussex, U.K., where he wrote his thesis on Wallace Stevens. A life-long poetry writer, Ken has spent the majority of his career as a hi-tech executive and biotech venture capitalist in Silicon Valley. His first poetry book, Borrowed Light, won the 2020 Red Mountain Press Discovery Award, as well as a 2021 prize from the National Federation of Press Women. Ken has been nominated for multiple Pushcart Prizes, has won the Betsy Colquitt Poetry Award, and serves on the Board of the Community of Writers. His poems have appeared in over 50 journals and numerous anthologies. Check out the Penn Sound poetry archive mentioned in this episode at https://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/. Learn more about Ken at www.kenhaas.org. This podcast is hosted and produced by John Gillespie. Check out our website for more episodes: https://poetry-medicine-for-the-soul.simplecast.com/Listen and subscribe to Poetry Medicine for the Soul in Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Get in touch with us at: [email protected]