Concerned Attentions is Knute Skinner’s first book of poetry since his collected edition, Fifty Years: Poems 1957-2007, appeared from Salmon. As his readers may expect, the new work exhibits his artful and often moving, unnerving, or humourous turns of phrase. Moreover, it displays the poet’s continuing fascination with the tenuous relationship between the quotidian and the otherworldly.
Knute Skinner was born in St. Louis, Missouri, but for fifty years has had a home in County Clare, where he now lives with his spouse Edna Faye Kiel. His collected edition Fifty Years: Poems 1957-2007, from Salmon, contained new work along with work taken from thirteen previous books. His collection The Other Shoe won the 2004-2005 Pavement Saw Chapbook Award. A limited edition of his poems, translated into Italian by Roberto Nassi, was published by Damocle Edizioni, Chioggia, Italy, in 2011. A memoir, Help Me to a Getaway, was published by Salmon in March 2010.