Welcome to the website of Kim Peter Kovac, poet and consultant in theater for young audiences, new play development, and networking. Here you’ll find information on my poetry collection, some of my theater work and publications, and representative poems I began writing poetry about ten years ago to tell stories in verse, as my theater work was about telling stories on stage.
ON THE ORIGIN OF STORIES
The sun glints off the beryl-like blue
glacier ice mantling the Darwin Range
on Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego
as I travel east in a survey boat
on the calmish waters of the Beagle
Channel en route to Bahía Wulaia,
a place sourced serendipitously
after noticing a folded paper
fallen from a field notebook
in Down House, Darwin’s home.
My Master’s Degree in Myth-hunting
allows access to this archived trove
of a young man’s musings, jottings,
and sketches from 5 years of voyages
on the HMS Beagle. The paper
says “even the secrets have secrets,”
hand-printed under a scrawled
map locating a dome-midden left
by the Yaghan peoples who lived
eons ago. We will walk where Darwin
walked and try to dowse the soil
to stir up stories, knowing that memory
swirls the past into the future-present.
This crystal-cold and stark archipelago,
named by Europeans for the night-fires
of the indigenous folk who did not leave
writings yet surely left history and myth
here—in the air, the earth, the water,
and mostly in the memories of fires.
KIM PETER KOVAC 