Poet Laureate Confronts His Childhood Abuse by Priest

THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR
By Will Higgins

Decades after his abuse by an Indiana priest, Norbert Krapf wrote the poems that became “Catholic Boy Blues.”

INDIANA---Norbert Krapf, Indiana's poet laureate from 2008 to 2010, kept a secret for a half-century: As a boy in Jasper, in Southern Indiana, he had been molested by his parish priest, Monsignor Othmar Schroeder. Krapf was 63 when he told of the abuse to the Bishop of Evansville, who presides over Jasper's Catholic community. Krapf that same year began writing poems about his abuse. He was by then an experienced poet, had published 10 books of poetry. But they had never flowed out of him as they did now — 325 poems in a year. The book, which contains 130 of the poems, was released April 1. It's called "Catholic Boy Blues: A Poet's Journal of Healing." Krapf spoke with Will Higgins on the phone, in person and via email. [Read more...]