Poets Welcome
Poets Welcome Podcast
Episode 11: Kate Sutherland
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Episode 11: Kate Sutherland

Rhinos, frogs, witches, collage

[This is a longer version of the interview that airs on QCCR 99.3 FM in February. That edit will soon be available on the QCCR Poets Welcome Playlist.]

Kate’s poetry delves deeply into archives— whether it’s natural history, accounts of trophy hunting, so-called witch confessions, or fairytales about frogs. She makes poems out of findings like specimen tags, auction listings, and exploration logs. In the process, she offers new ways of confronting colonialism’s brutal and often, absurd, treatment of nature.

In talking with Kate, I was struck by how her work energizes, even as she tackles devastating subjects. There is something vital in the specificity of the confrontations with Western archives— it undercuts the seemingly faceless, inevitable power of colonialism. And though there is no confessional ‘I’ mediating our encounter with the records, the work is emotionally resonant. (Kate and I talked about this, but I couldn’t keep it in the episode because of technical issues.) The precise choices of selection, juxtaposition, and recontextualisation invite us to follow “through-lines” to the present day and participate in the poet’s investigation.

We talk about visual collage in the latter part of the episode. It was a pleasure to hear about about Kate’s new chapbook as well as practical matters like finding and organizing collage papers.

Of course, at the end of editing the interview, I felt I had a much clearer view of Kate’s work and wanted to go back and do it all over again. Alas. Every podcast is a record of learning, not knowing. I hope that there is something that feels invitational about that as well.

Notes

In Episode 11, Kate reads poems from How to Draw A Rhinoceros (Book*hug 2016), The Bones Are There (Book*hug 2020) and talks about the making of her new collage chapbook, Nuptials (Knife Fork Book 2023).

In our discussion of Documentary Poetry, Kate recommends the following texts:

  • Robert Kroetsch, The Ledger (Brick Books, 1975)

  • “The Book of the Dead” in The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser (University of Pittsburgh Press 2006).

  • Sarah Vap, Viability (Penguin Random House Canada, 2016).

  • M. NourbeSe Philip, Zong! (The Mercury Press, 2008; Invisible Press, 2023).

  • Soraya Peerbaye, Tell: poems for a girlhood (Pedlar Press, 2015; Brick Books, 2021).

Later in the episode, when we take about collage, Kate mentions these digital archives:

After the interview, Kate generously shared this list of books by other poet-collagists:

  • The Collages of Helen Adam (Cuniform Press, 2017). 

  • John Ashbery, They Knew What They Wanted: Poems & Collages (Rizzoli Electa, 2018). 

  • Rachel Blau DuPlessis, The Collage Poems of Drafts (Salt Publishing, 2011). 

  • Krista Franklin, Too Much Midnight (Haymarket Books, 2020). 

  • Sophie Herxheimer, Index (zimZalla, 2021).

  • Herta Müller, Father’s on the Phone with the Flies (Seagull Books, 2018) [translated by Thomas Cooper]. 

  • Monica Ong, Silent Anatomies (Kore Press, 2015). 

  • Sarah J. Sloat, Hotel Almighty (Sarabande Books, 2020)

Kate Sutherland is the author of two collections of short stories (Summer Reading and All In Together Girls), two collections of poems (How to Draw a Rhinoceros and The Bones Are There), and, most recently, a collage chapbook (Nuptials). Summer Reading won a Saskatchewan Book Award, and How to Draw a Rhinoceros was shortlisted for a Creative Writing Book Award by the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment. Her stories and poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies including Best Canadian Poetry and Best American Experimental Writing. Her collages have been published in Canthius, long con, and Photo Trouvée magazines and have recently been exhibited as part of the Fertile Festival of New and Inventive Works at Remote Gallery (Toronto) and in the group show Word of Mouth: Folklore, Collage, & Community at A’ the Airts (Sanquhar, Scotland).  

*Graphic contains detail from the cover of Nuptials (Knife Fork Book, 2023)


Coming in March!

In Episode 12, Cory Lavender talks to Shannon Bramer about her new collection of poetry for children, Robot, Unicorn, Queen: Poems for you and me, illustrated by Irene Luxbacher (Groundwood, 2023).

Discussion about this podcast

Poets Welcome
Poets Welcome Podcast
A radio show by poets about poetry, produced in association with Queens County Community Radio 99.3 FM in Liverpool, Nova Scotia. Hosted by Alison Smith with regular contributions from Alice Burdick, Cory Lavender, and Michelle Elrick.
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