About Me
Classes I Teach
Fall 2024
| CRN | Course | Sec. | Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| 00883 | EWRT 1B | 01Y | Reading, Writing and Research |
Ken Weisner was born in Oakland and grew up there in the ‘60’s. After attending Oberlin College and the Iowa Writers Workshop, he went to UC Santa Cruz for PhD graduate work in literature in 1982 and has lived there ever since. Ken has been teaching writing and literature at De Anza College since the mid-nineties part time, and since 2000 full time. Beginning in 2024, Ken will teach part time through the emeritus faculty program through 2028. Ken teaches poetry writing at De Anza and is the author of the 2024 poetry collection from Shanti Arts Press, Songs for the Great Horned. His previous collections include The Sacred Geometry of Pedestrians (2002), Anything on Earth (2010), and Cricket to Star (2019), all from Hummingbird Press. Ken currently edits and advises the national edition of Red Wheelbarrow through De Anza, and until recently advised the spring student edition as well. For many years Ken edited Quarry West through Porter College at UCSC. Ken has also led poetry workshops at Salinas Valley State Prison (between 2014 and 2022). He was recently (2020, 2022) interviewed on KSQD radio by "Hive Collective" members Dion O'Reilly (4/6/20) and Julie Murphy. He was interviewed by Murphy about his work bringing creative writing workshops to inmates (4/26/20), and then about his own new work (4/3/22). He also participated in a one hour "Hive" tribute (7/10/22) to the late beloved Santa Cruz poet Robert Sward.
Ken Weisner’s poetry has been featured on the “Poets Against the War” website (2003),The Music Lovers Poetry Anthology (Persea, 2007), and John Chandler and Wilma Marcus Chandler’s “Willing Suspension Armchair Theater” production of Lost and Found: The Literature of Fathers and Sons (May, 2009). Garrison Keillor read Ken's poem "The Gardener" on The Writer's Almanac in August of 2010. His poetry has appeared in recent editions of the Catamaran, Chicago Quarterly Review, Porter Gulch Review, DMQ Review, Hilltromper, Perfume River Poetry Review and Monterey Poetry Review. Ken pubished four poems in the spring, 2017 issue of the online journal Phren-Z, and four in the fall, 2017 issue of Nine Mile—a print and online journal out of Syracuse, NY. His poem "Hunger" appeared in the 2020 Porter Gulch Review. "Troll's Confession" appeared in the spring, 2022 Xinachtli Journal, and a poem about the first major league at bat of Mike Yastrzemski appeared in the April, 2022 "The Twin Bill." Poems from Kens' new collection about the great horned owl were published recently in Phren-Z, Caesura, Catamaran, and in the winter, 2023 edition of Jung Journal: Culture and Psyche.