Kathryn Cowles, poet and artist, will be visiting 海角原创 students this week and working with them on their craft. This is a great chance for students to open their minds to various forms of poetry, artistry, and storytelling. On top of her workshops, there will also be a reading open to the public on Wednesday, February 25, at 7pm in Rockwell Hall鈥檚 Murphy Auditorium.
To celebrate her arrival at campus, I, a Wick intern, have asked her a few questions to help introduce her craft, background, and subject matter. What differentiates Kathryn鈥檚 work from others, in my opinion, is her instinctual, deep approach to life鈥檚 complexities. Utilizing a mixture of poetry, collage work, and even storytelling, she authentically portrays the mindset and struggles of modern womanhood.
Kathryn鈥檚 third book, The Strange Wondrous Works of Eleanor Eleanor won the Fence Modern Poets Prize. She is an associate professor at English at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and her poetry and collages have been displayed in a solo art exhibit, Feminine Monstrous.
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Mercury: What media are you engaging with right now? By whom?鈥
Kathryn: Lorna Simpson made a series of collages in the 2010s where she takes vintage magazine images of Black women and replaces their hair with big wild other images鈥攃rystal formations from geology textbooks, or swelling painted smoke, or printed language. The effect is gorgeous and wild and fierce and celebratory, sort of like an empowering metaphor attached right at the hair root onto the women鈥檚 heads. I鈥檝e been moving more toward the fiercely celebratory in my own work, and I find these images moving and heartening.
I am also interested in collage鈥檚 overlap with documentary poetics. A fairly recent book (2018) I love is Karen Green鈥檚鈥Frail Sister, from the wonderful Siglio Press, wherein the writer collages and types and paints on real family documents (letters, photographs, playbills, sheet music) to write a fictional account of her aunt Constance, who went missing years ago. The mix of real and fictional fascinates me to begin with, but the book wouldn鈥檛 work except the art and the writing are so brilliant, strange, and riveting.
Mercury: What lessons have other artists taught you?鈥
Kathryn: One of the most important lessons anyone ever taught me came from the poet and multi-media artist Eleni Sikelianos. In my first book, I included images made by other people rather than my own collages, except on the cover. I didn鈥檛 feel like I could include my collages in my first book because I didn鈥檛 have an MFA in the studio arts (though, weirdly, the collages from friends I did include were all from people without MFAs in studio art!). I admired Eleni so much, and she was visiting my graduate school and holding writing consultations with the poets. I remember she sat me down and said, 鈥淔irst, you don鈥檛 need permission to make and publish your own artwork. But second, just in case, you have my permission. I give you permission to make your own artwork.鈥 It seems silly, but this was a formative moment for me鈥攁 hinge that opened into the whole rest of my career. I stopped worrying about what I was allowed to do, feeling instead that I was allowed to do anything, in any medium, as long as it was what the work called for. Now, I make a point of also passing along a sense of permission whenever I visit a school or teach a workshop.
Mercury: By surpassing traditional poetic formats, are you making a statement? What is it鈥痮n鈥(Historicity, feminism, etc.)?鈥
Kathryn: I think of it less as making a statement than as using whatever tools I have to help me say a complicated thing about life in its full complication. I started out as a songwriter before I was a poet, and I find I still go to that medium when I have a thing to say that I can鈥檛 say another way. Also, I find that whenever I feel like I really know what I鈥檓 doing, chances are the thing I鈥檓 making is not that great鈥攁 lesser version or translation of the core circumstance I鈥檓 trying to get to stick to my page. So using different media or tools ensures I am always a little seat-of-my-pants, improvising, figuring it out as I go, using the writing (or making) as a device for thinking with. My work often ends up being feminist because I鈥檓 thinking about what it means to identify as a woman and how this has affected my life and the lives of people I love. But any statement the work makes sort of sneaks in through the back door.
Mercury: There is a鈥痥ey鈥痳ecurring character in your books: the elusive Eleanor鈥疎leanor.鈥疻hat trait of hers do you most admire and why?鈥
Kathryn: What a fun question! Eleanor first appeared in my first book, out of nowhere, sort of willing herself into existence, and what I love best about her is that she is brave and mischievous and self-determined. Eleanor never does what I want her to do or even think she鈥檒l do. I鈥檓 always telling my students that the poem is smarter than the person writing the poem, and we should follow it where it wants to go rather than try to wrench it where we want to go. Eleanor sort of took control over a number of poems in my first book and totally changed what I was trying to do. I was as surprised as anyone when she took over my third book as well. Writing Eleanor feels a little like channeling. She is really different from me, and it takes a lot of energy to keep up with her. But we make a good team. I hope she comes back again in some future book. It would be fun to grow old together and see what happens.
Mercury: What can communities do for their local artists who may not, as you put it鈥痠n your most recent book, be 鈥渃ompelled towards self-preservation鈥?鈥
Kathryn: I was thinking of the Modernist artist and poet and playwright and fashion designer and novelist (etc.) Mina Loy when I wrote that. Lore has it that when editors have tried to compile Loy鈥檚 work, it is made impossible by the fact that she wrote poems on the backs of receipts or lamp designs or bits of paper tucked into books, which she then left with friends (unsigned) or abandoned completely. Although she was a fantastically innovative, brilliant, weird writer, most of her works are out of print and hard to come by. Eleanor is this type of person as well鈥攕he鈥檚 living her art more than making it to be collected and processed by art establishments. A lot of art I love has conceptual or performative aspects and so is not necessarily product-based. I wish our systems of artistic support allowed people to experiment more, and to focus without having to worry about making ends meet. Ireland recently launched a Basic Income Support for a couple thousand artists a year, allowing them a weekly stipend that is enough to afford them time to make whatever it is they need to make and do whatever they need to do. Although not without flaws, I think this is a brilliant concept. Think of the art people could make if they were allowed to focus on the making rather than selling end products. We have little pockets of community like this in the United States. I do wish there was more of a chance for young artists to play around and try lots of things without the pressure to post or publish or sell. Some of my favorite artists of the past spent years playing around before they made their most celebrated works. The play is part of the development, in my mind.