Kate Rogers next poetry collection, The Meaning of Leaving, is forthcoming with Montreal-based publisher, Ace of Swords (AOS), in early 2024. Her poems recently appeared in subTerrain, The Windsor Review and Looking Back at Hong Kong (Chinese University of Hong Kong). Kate’s reviews have appeared in Arc Poetry Magazine, The Goose and CV2. Kate is a Co-Director of Art Bar, Toronto’s oldest poetry only reading series. More at: katerogers.ca/
You can read her poem My Mother’s House in the October 2023 issue.
Would you like to tell us a little bit more about your poem? For instance, how or why you wrote it, or perhaps provide some extra context?
My poem “My Mother’s House” is an expression of grief as I have been watching the decline of my mother from dementia for the past six years. She was a very independent woman who left her city career to move to the wilderness just outside Algonquin Park in her late fifties. I hope that the details I have included in the poem highlight her strengths, along with her vulnerability.
Why was the poetic form the best fit for this particular piece of work?
Free verse featuring image and metaphor is my chosen form. I find that letting the images I have of my mother’s life and decline speak for me allows the grief I feel about losing my mother by degrees to surface. Many people experience this kind of loss and I hope expressing my sadness also helps them with their grief.
Do you have a collection of poetry or even a single poem that acts as a touchstone?
It is hard to choose one collection or poem as a touchstone since so many have been meaningful me such as Don Coles’ work and Libby Scheier’s, both of whom I studied with during an honors year at York University in the late 1980’s. I would say one of the most influential poems for me in the past twenty years has been “The City” by Greek-Egyptian poet C.P. Cavafy. He was writing in the late 19th century and early 20th century. He lived in a kind of psychological exile in the U.K. and Constantinople for being different from the majority. (He was gay.) While I was living in Hong Kong I was introduced to Cavafy’s poem “The City” at an Arabic Nadwah led by Egyptian poet Sayed Gouda. These lines in particular spoke to me:
You won’t find a new country, won’t find another shore. / This city will always pursue you. / You’ll walk the same streets, grow old / in the same neighbourhoods, turn gray in these / same houses. / You’ll always end up in this city.
I had left Canada for post-secondary teaching contracts abroad, but also because I needed to get away from my complex, damaged family so I could become more truly myself. The poem “The City” helped me understand I could never get away from my family and the related wounds I carry. Ultimately, I think that poem helped me begin writing honestly about those wounds and their implications for me.
If you didn’t write poetry, how do you think you might access the same fulfillments that poetry offers in your life?
I dream of returning to needlepoint and listening to music, or the CBC in an easy chair. It’s very specific, repetitive form is calming. My part-time work as a co-director of Art Bar and ongoing struggle with grief about the decline of my parents are taking up a lot of my energy these days.
How do you revise your work?
I revise my work with the help of two workshop groups I belong to: one is Kate Marshall Flaherty’s Stillpoint editing group and the other is a spinoff of the Ellen Bass Total Immersion group. I also exchange work with a couple of poet friends. I let some poems sit for somewhere between one and six months so I can bring a fresh eye to them.
What are you working on now?
I have a new poetry collection coming out in early 2024: The Meaning of Leaving. I am psyching up for promotion of that collection and trying to set up readings. The collection touches on intimate partner violence, along with the violent destruction of freedoms in Hong Kong, where I lived for the better part of 20 years, and the violence of Canadian society against unhoused people. I am preparing myself to share the vulnerability I feel bringing the book into the world. Mentioning it here is one way to prepare.
My poet friend Donna Langevin and I have a co-written chapbook entitled “Homeless City” coming out with Aeolus House in late 2023 / early 2024 too. It features poems about our responses to homelessness in Toronto.
In the past year I have been writing poems about the wildfires and the climate crisis, as well as my parents’ decline. I hope they will eventually appear together in a collection I am currently calling The Forest and the Mountain.
How or where or with what does a poem begin?
A poem begins with an image or a phrase for me. Something which startles me into hyper-awareness.
Are there other art forms that inspire or inform your poetry?
Increasingly, visual art inspires me to write ekphrastic poems. Since imagery already plays an important role in my poetry this makes sense to me.
How do you make space for poetry in your daily routine?
I often retreat to my writing space first thing in the morning. While I was travelling to see my husband’s family during the summer I kept a writing journal. Both habits mean I write regularly.
What are you reading or watching or leaning to lately that intrigues or inspires you?
I recently read Kim Fahner’s poetry collection, Emptying the Ocean, and I admire the strength, vulnerability and craft in her book. I am currently reading Susan Musgrave’s poetry collection Exculpatory Lilies and I appreciate its honesty about grief—something I strive for in my own work. I am also currently reading Alice Major’s Knife on Snow. Her poems on the wildfires and the way we mythologize the end days of our species are powerful. I also love the poetry of Ocean Vuong who has said his whole life has been about learning to live with grief.
Have you ever received advice (or has there been something you’ve learned on your own) about writing or revising poems that has made you a better poet? What was it?
The best advice I recently received about my poetry is to condense, condense, condense. I already knew that is important, but reminders are helpful! Meaning can get away from readers if poems meander too far. I got that advice from Ellen Bass craft workshops and it was reinforced by the members of my Ellen Bass Total Immersion spinoff workshop.