Celeste Lipkes, Author
Asheville poet Celeste Lipkes’ debut collection Radium Girl draws upon her own experiences with illness and death among those she loves and her career as a psychiatrist working with patients admitted to medical/surgical units who also have mental health needs. The poems move back and forth between the viewpoint of a doctor and that of a patient. “I became interested in medicine in high school after my own experiences as a patient,” Lipkes says. “When I write and read poetry, I pay very close attention to words and how they make me feel; when working with patients, particularly in therapy, I always try to remember that what we say and how we say it truly matters. Often our attention is our most valuable resource.”
Through the years, writing, for her, has been “a way to make sense of things,” and to find beauty and meaning in difficult and painful experiences. “My greatest hope,” she says, “is that someone might read my book and feel that what I have written is an articulation of something they have felt but never put words to.”
Radium Girl, March 21, 2023, poetry, paperback, $16.95, by Celeste Lipkes, and published by University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI. Upcoming events include a reading March 9 at the Association of Writers Program Conference in Seattle, WA, and a hybrid in-person and virtual reading and conversation at Malaprop’s Bookstore/Café on March 22 at 6 p.m. Learn more at CelesteLipkes.com.
