Dear friends, our friend and former poet laureate of Portsmouth Elizabeth Knies has passed away.
Liz first came to New Hampshire in 1965. A master’s degree in English Language and Linguistics from UNH (1985) served as a passport for two and a half years of teaching in Kobe, Japan, followed by a year in Missouri and six in Colorado.
In 1995, homesick for deciduous trees and old friends, she returned to New Hampshire, and in 1998-1999 earned a master’s degree as a teaching fellow in Creative Writing at Boston University. She taught ESL, writing, critical thinking and literature in New Hampshire, Maine, Japan, Missouri, Colorado and Massachusetts, and has worked as a reviewer and an editor.
In early 2002, Liz lost her husband to cancer and was helped by a bereavement program at Seacoast Hospice. In the year following her husband’s death, she wrote deeply personal poems about the experience that she published as a chapbook, Absent from Felicity, for friends and family.
Her most enduring literary connection is with the Skimmilk Farm poets, commemorated in Ken Browne’s documentary, “Mondays at Skimmilk: 30 Years of Writers at Work.”
Liz was the sixth poet laureate of Portsmouth NH, 2007 – 2009 and is the author of The New Year and Other Poems; Streets After Rain; From the Window; and White Peonies. For more information on Liz’s laureate project visit pplp.org
Liz was a beautiful soul and a wonderful friend to so many and she will be deeply missed
