Dread and Splendor:
Paintings and Poems for a New Earth

poetry by Eileen P. Kennedy; artwork by Irene Christensen

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Dread and Splendor: Paintings and Poems for a New Planet brings together the poetry of American writer Eileen P. Kennedy with the paintings of Norwegian artist Irene Christensen.  These artists met in the botanically spectacular country of Costa Rica where they devised the present book out of their common interest in natural beauty and opposition to the exploitation of the planet. The paintings depict the defiant feminine presence at the heart of the environmental justice movement. These observant poems, varying in form and content, are ekphrastic (written in response) to this captivating and powerful art. The book is many layered. International images from Norway, Costa Rica, the United States depict a planet at a pivotal moment, where wild places and refuges are deteriorating.

ART / General
POETRY / General

ISBN: 978-1-962080-81-5 (print; softcover; perfect bound)

LCCN: 2025944582

Released January 13, 2026 | Copyright 2026

70 pages; 28 full-color illustrations

Author Biography

Irene Christensen divides her time between New York City and Oslo, Norway, producing her work in her studios. She has exhibited in Europe, Asia, South America, and the United States. Her art has been shown in museums, art centers, and galleries in the United States, Costa Rica, Norway, Germany, Belgium, Brazil, Israel, and Argentina. She showed an installation of nine accordion books at Palazzo Mora during the Venice Biennale. She has received many honorariums and awards in Europe and the United States and is represented in many museums and private collections. John Zeaman, art critic and writer, says, “Irene Christensen’s art is about painting as a magical act.”
www.irenechristensen.art

Eileen P. Kennedy is the author of two collections of poetry: Banshees (Flutter Press, 2015), which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and won Second Prize in Poetry from the Wordwrite Book Awards; and Touch My Head Softly (Finishing Line Press, 2021), which Literary Titanhas described as “emotionally-charged poetry that explores life with observant poems that will appeal to anyone who loves inspired poetry.” It was a finalist for the International Book Awards in General Poetry. She taught writing and literature on the faculty of the City University of New York. She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, with the ghost of Emily Dickinson.
www.eileenpkennedy.com

Endorsements

“Dread and Splendor is a collaboration between two accomplished women that joins their individual art forms to create a many-levelled connection to hearts and minds. In this book, Eileen Kennedy’s ekphrastic poems are written in response to Irene Christensen’s surrealistic paintings. They have created a unique and important book for our troubled times, offering insight and healing.”
—Ginger Andro, artist, curator and vice president, Sculptors Guild, New York

“How might beauty and spectacle, in art and writing, make us think with complex urgency about the environmental crisis? Painter Irene Christensen and poet Eileen P. Kennedy, who met at an artist’s residency in Costa Rica, address this challenge in their stunning collaboration—Dread and Splendor: Paintings and Poems for a New Earth. Christensen, from Norway, is a surrealist and colorist; her gorgeous paintings depict women in mythical settings, confronting a global climate crisis that becomes the focus of Kennedy’s ekphrastic poems. Kennedy sets the elegiac tone in ‘Perilous Journey’: ‘I see two things at once: the water and the heads of five women / The ocean that sends an arrogance of land . . . not abetted by moonlight caresses . . . the women, different colors, yet the same . . . precariously perched in this world, navigating from danger to a new home.’ Kennedy’s previous book dealt with lovers facing great loss during a ravaging illness, and here again she writes with bewilderment and passion inspired by the women Christensen paints with wide-open eyes.”
—Cheryl J. Fish, Professor of English, BMCC/CUNY; author of Off the Yoga Mat, Crater and Tower, and The Sauna is Full of Maids

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