Kate Rogers is the author of The Meaning of Leaving, a tender and unflinching collection of poems that strives to show society's thoughtless acceptance of violence towards the vulnerable: women, the natural world, and the unhoused who struggle with mental health and addiction issues. These are brave and tender poems that will ignite and unite.
These are also incredibly personal poems, many of which Rogers identifies as autobiographical. In this Power Q & A, we ask Kate about the impetus and challenges of this project.
What a cover! The Meaning of Leaving by Kate Rogers is now available.
Q: Your book deals with intensely personal but also, sadly far-reaching themes and materials. Can you speak to the challenges of working with difficult autobiographical material?
A: There were days when it was particularly challenging to work on the poems about intimate partner violence in The Meaning of Leaving. Most of the challenge came from returning to the poems again and again to craft them from raw experience and emotion into art. And yet, the most important part of writing poetry is the revision. That process, like shaping any experience, moment or narrative on the page, can also be liberating. There were both challenges and rewards in working on my poems inspired by five years in an abusive marriage.
A series of losses and discoveries led me to write The Meaning of Leaving. One catalyst was the death of my abusive ex-partner during the pandemic. I suppose his death freed me and my unconscious to return to the painful experiences of abuse I’d had with him, but on my own terms.
While it was challenging to craft art from my years in an abusive marriage, I found that literary devices and the associative nature of poetry took me from literal experiences to metaphorical truth. I used metaphor, simile and form to evoke emotion. At times, free association helped me expand on my experience in unexpected ways. Repetition was helpful for emphasis. At all times, I was striving to evoke the impact of physical and psychological violence and seeking emotional truth.
Two linked reasons I wrote The Meaning of Leaving were to chronicle the journey of leaving my abusive ex-husband and to take back control of the narrative of my life. A tactic abusive partners often use to maintain control is to isolate the partner they are abusing from friends, family and community. Isolation means she has no external validation for her feelings and doubts the reality of her own suffering. I hope reading my poetry collection, reading this mini essay on the challenges of crafting autobiographical material into art, or hearing an interview with me helps anyone in an abusive relationship who needs to feel they are not alone. I hope they would be empowered by that recognition and ultimately, be able to leave their abusive partner.
Poet Kate Rogers.
More about Kate Rogers:
Kate Rogers' poetry and critical writing have appeared in many literary journals and anthologies both in Canada and abroad, including The Montreal International Poetry Prize Anthology (Véhicule Press), Looking Back at Hong Kong (CUHK Press), subTerrain, ARC, PRISM, and many others. Her most recent poetry collection is Out of Place (Aeolus House/Quattro Books 2017.) She is a co-director of the Art Bar Poetry Reading Series in Toronto.