Poetry, Texts & Plays
Katie Batten's written work, like her musical work, has been deeply focused on giving voice to experiences
that otherwise defy language. Her collection of poetry, Witness, seeks to give voice to events in recent human history, both public and private, that often slip from social consciousness.
Vestiges and Bones marks the second volume of poetry by Kate (MacDowell) Batten. Continuing her poetic style of short prose and autobiographical glimpses, Kate explores the more macabre side of life. Concerned with body, loss, and dying, she captures the unexpected and often unwanted edges of ourselves. Cutting and to the point, her poetic style is sparse and grueling. 
In A Study of Sandy Hook, photographer and author Katie Batten MacDowell explores the vibrant ecology of Sandy Hook, New Jersey. In this collection of photos, she explores the peninsula through the seasons of winter and spring throughout the hours of the day. Capturing wildlife and the wilds of the water, Katie reflects on how the landscape impacts her and how she absorbs it all in and comes to finding meaning in the world around her.
Turning the Silver Wheel is a collection of poetic-prose styled in Katie's miniature narrative, where each poem's emotional intensity and movement runs counter to the seeming structure and solidity of the paragraph that contains them. Meant to be read aloud in a kind of rapid, Slam poetic style, words jump off the page confronting the reader with experiences of loss, battery, longing, and despair. In keeping with all her work, Katie infuses herself, her vulnerabilities, her love, and her shame within the tightly packed paragraphs that make up this volume, as if to somehow contain her own sense of "bigness" or as she describes, her "too-much-muchness."
Into Quiet is a reflection on the natural world around poet Katie Batten MacDowell's coastal home on the back bay of the Atlantic Coast in New Jersey. In this text, she explores just a small portion of her ecosystem to which she belongs through the refined Japanese poetic styles of Haiku and Tanka.
Love Amongst the Fishes is a passionate and explicit poem in 66 parts that explores Katie's profound experience of falling in love. The poem explores all the joys, longings, complications, desires, disappointments, and the raw sense of exposure that comes with fully encountering another human being. Taking more then a year to complete, Love Amongst the Fishes marks Katie's most intimate and longest work to date.
Chasing Zebras: The Blogs (January 2011-May 2011) Bringing a segment of her popular blog to print, Katie provides a brief glimmer of how catastrophic illness, failing marriage, love, abuse, family have collided to impact just a few months of her life. At once poignant and brutally honest, Katie finds the edges of life, love, and the possibility of hope.
Son of Arianrhod: Sonatas for Cello and Piano For listeners and musicians alike, coming soon the release of the companion sheet music to Katie Batten's latest album, complete with an in-depth introduction discussing each piece and the thoughts that went into those pieces.
Paperback
Amazon.com
Chasing Zebras: Sonatas for Piano and Guitar For listeners and musicians alike, coming soon the release of the companion sheet music to Katie Batten's album Chasing Zebras, complete with an in-depth introduction discussing each piece and the thoughts that went into those pieces.
Textbooks
Sacred Groves: Creating and Sustaining Neopagan Covens is an in-depth exploration of the role of groups within Neopagan religious practice. Specifically designed for clergy and clergy-in training, Sacred Groves seeks to provide critical guidance, exploring issues such as: historical and theological purpose of groups; stages of group development; member selection and retention; teaching and training; tradition development; working with families; multiculturalism; ethics and more. Sacred Groves is grounded in the latest theories from social, developmental, and group psychology to provide students and current clergy with a firm and practical foundation in understanding how these elements of group work operate within a religious context to ensure that group leaders care, not only for the spiritual lives of their members, but also their emotional and relational ones. Due out October 2009.
Ethics & Professional Practice for Neopagan Clergy is the first text of its kind, designed to provide an in-depth exploration of the parameters of ministerial practice and the importance of such practice being grounded within an ethical framework. Specifically designed for clergy and clergy-in-training, Ethics & Professional Practice seeks to provide critical guidance, exploring issues such as: An introduction to the philosophy of ethics; the intersection between ethics & religion; discussion on values, virtues, & worldviews; professional parameters of practice, including an in-depth discussion on the role of pastoral counselor; introduction to religious developmental theory with spiritual care tips; ethical issues associated with money, sex, working with children & adolescents and more...
Complete with case studies, questions for contemplation, diagrams for decision-making, and ample journal activities, Ethics & Professional Practice for Neopagan Clergy empowers the religious professional to feel confident in their capacity to care for the spiritual and emotional lives of their membership and students.
Goddess Wheel of the Year invites each of you to explore the many ways to enrich your spiritual life in ritual celebration of yourself and the Goddess. Learn to match your own developmental, psychological, and spiritual needs with specific Goddess aspects of the Maiden, Mother, Crone and Dark Goddess. Explore ways to celebrate at Solar and Lunar rites, as well as learn how to creatively re-imagine rites of antiquity or develop a unique year of celebration that reflects your own revelation of the Goddess. Whether you are new to the Goddess path or have been a life-long practitioner, you’ll find ample ideas to inspire you and reinvigorate your personal and spritual life.
Excerpts
Click to read:
The Blogs
Chasing Zebras. This internationally popular blog chronicles Katie's journey through the maze of modern healthcare, the struggles of coping & meaning-making, confronting mortality & mystery, falling in love, & an unexpected remission. This is my story of being a Zebra in field of horses--where medicine simply doesn't know enough..
Click to read!
Restoration Earth
Restoration Earth: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Nature & Civilization has now released its first issue, edited by Katie and Dr. Mark A. Schroll.
To read Issue 1, Volume 1:
Click Here!
To read Issue 1, Volume 2:
Click Here!
" To hold traumatic reality in consciousness requires a social context that affirms and protects the victim and that joins victim and witness in a common alliance. For the individual victim, this social context is created by relationships with friends, lovers, and family. For the larger society, the social context is created by political movements that give voice to the disempowered. "
- Judith Lewis Herman, MD., Trauma and Recovery