 Janet Kuypers has a Communications degree in News/Editorial Journalism (starting in computer science engineering studies) from the UIUC. She had the equivalent of a minor in photography and specialized in creative writing. A portrait photographer for years in the early 1990s, she was also an acquaintance rape workshop facilitator, and she started her publishing career as an editor of two literary magazines. Later she was an art director, webmaster and photographer for a few magazines for a publishing company in Chicago.
She sang with acoustic bands “Mom’s Favorite Vase”, “Weeds and Flowers” and “the Second Axing”, and does music sampling. Kuypers is published in books, magazines and on the internet around 9,300 times for writing, and over 17,800 times for art work in her professional career, and has been profiled in such magazines as Nation and Discover U, and was nominated as Poet of the Year for 2006 by the International Society of Poets. She has also been highlighted on radio stations, including WEFT (90.1FM), WZRD (88.3FM), WLS (8900AM), the internet radio stationsArtistFirst dot com, chicagopoetry.com’s Poetry World Radio and Scars Internet Radio (SIR), and was even shortly on Q101 FM radio. She has also appeared on television for poetry in Nashville and Chicago, and was interviewed on her art work on Urbana’s WCIA channel 3 10 o’clock news.
She turned her writing into performance art on her own and with musical groups like Pointless Orchestra,” “5D/5D” and “Order From Chaos,” and starting in 2005 Kuypers ran a monthly iPodCast of her work, as well as an Internet radio station (JK Radio). She has performed spoken word and music across the country - in the spring of 1998 she embarked on her first national poetry tour, with featured performances, among other venues, at the Albuquerque Spoken Word Festival during the National Poetry Slam; her bands have had concerts in Chicago and in Alaska; in 2003 she hosted and performed at a weekly poetry and music open mike (called Sing Your Life), and from 2002 through 2005 was a featured performance artist, doing quarterly performance art shows with readings, music and images.
In addition to being published with Bernadette Miller in the short story collection book Domestic Blisters, as well as in a book of poetry turned to prose with Eric Bonholtzer in the book Duality, Kuypers has had many books of her own published: Hope Chest in the Attic, The Window, Close Cover Before Striking, (woman.) (spiral bound), Autumn Reason (novel in letter form), the Average Guy’s Guide (to Feminism), Contents Under Pressure, etc., and eventually The Key To Believing (2002 650 page novel), Changing Gears (travel journals around the United States), The Other Side (European travel book), The Boss Lady’s Editorials, The Boss Lady’s Editorials — 2005 Expanded Edition, Seeing Things Differently, Change/Rearrange, Death Comes in Threes, Moving Performances, Six Eleven, Live at Cafe Aloha, Dreams, and Rough Mixes. Three collection books were also published of her work in 2004, Oeuvre (poetry), Exaro Versus (prose) and L’arte (art).
Gary, Editor, The Road Out of Town
I like (Kuypers’) poetry. So much poetry being written now is existential angst. I like the sort of poetry that paints a picture in your head and you feel like you are there - physically or emotionally - for just a second.
Taproot Zine Reviews (on “Looking Through Their Windows”)
I like Janet Kuypers’ poems...for a poet under 30, her mastery of the simple word is exceptional. Too many poets, when they attempt a change of persona (especially in the first person voice), the result is often flat, unbelievable, too forced. Not so with Kuypers. In the poem “Private Lives III, the elevated train”, she takes us for a ride with morning commute yuppies on a crowded train to work. Suddenly the poet’s disgust for these middle-class workers surfaces; when she observes a woman decked out in a full-length fur coat, her reaction becomes the urge to spill coffee on the woman. “I’ll bet they don’t even know what the animals they killed for this looked like,” she writes. Most of the other poems here are good, though Kuypers’ emotionality can become intense, if not bewildering. --kn
Jesus Trejo, writer (on the writing of Janet Kuypers)
(Kuypers’) poetry is excellent, great, with an aftertaste of self-questioning. All I can hope for is for her to keep on entertaining and amusing with her words the ears of poetry lovers and amateur poets as myself.
Brian B. Braddock, Writer (on 1996 Children, Churches and Daddies)
I passed on a copy to my brother who is the director of the St. Camillus AIDS programs. We found (Children, Churches and Daddies) obvious dedication along this line admirable.
Fred Whitehead, Editor, Freethought History (re: “Philosopher at the Blue Note”)
This “Blue Note” poem instantly haunted me because of its gritty realism, and its deceptive “simplicity” (consider further what this guy’s “religion” really is...and how “universal” it may be out there). She resolutely tells the truth about the lives of people in contemporary America, shorn of glitter and evasion and deceit. I admire her vigor and her purpose, and especially how she accomplishes all this with freshness of vision. Discarding illusions without mercy, she’s one of the bravest new voices on the scene today.
Paul Weinman, Writer (on 1996 Children, Churches and Daddies)
Wonderful new direction (Children, Churches and Daddies has) taken - great articles, etc. (especially those on AIDS). Great stories - all sorts of hot info!
Jerin Stanlake, Writer, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada (on the writing of Janet Kuypers and the Internet Site)
Wow! She kicks!! Right on!! I just got this ’ere Internet thingie up and running this week and I been checking out the net for a place to drop my poetry...I wanna make sure I don’t waste my time with a poetry server who ain’t gonna bother with me....anyways, I was reading The Burning first, then This Is What It Means... and a couple more including The Letter, and I was really impressed, finally someone who actually got personally involved in their poetry, not standing back like some “Frasier Sitcom” intellectual type....you know what I mean? I mean you get into (Kuypers’) stuff, you FEEL it...obviously I really like poetry, the more powerful and intense the better...and I think I’m sitting on a g-damn nuclear bomb...
Lionel Bernard, Washington D.C.
(Kuypers’) poems are a treat to read.
I read (I Remember) twice and I must say that it was quite moving.
What I like about her writing is that it is very personal and she writes as though you were holding a conversation. Keep up the good work!
Joe Peebles, Editor, Diarist’s Journal
(Kuypers’ work) is great writing, and she writes extremely well...She is a great writer. Keep up the good work...Diarist’s Journal can certainly use people with her talent.
Books and cds
Kuypers’ Bio
Kuypers’ Poems
Kuypers’ Prose
Chicago Poet and Poetry
Chicago Artist and Art
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