Kate Siklosi : part five

Why is poetry important?

In a world where we’re constantly being bombarded by and confronted by limits—whether they be environmental, personal, political—poetry is important because it provides a space for us to imagine beyond, to push boundaries, to brush up against im/possibilities. It doesn’t require us to have all the answers, but challenges us to move beyond the need to have those answers in the first place, and proliferate the possibilities instead. It does not rescue us from the discomforts of the world, or the trials of being human, but it does offer us critical tools to survive it all: namely, resistance, love, play, and community. 

Kate Siklosi : part four

What poets changed the way you thought about writing?

Oh gosh—I wouldn’t have even been remotely interested in reading, studying, or writing poetry without the influence of four poets early on: M. NourbeSe Philip, Dionne Brand, bpNichol, and bill bissett. From each I learned a different and particular way of practicing the craft of poetry. From Philip, I learned how to use poetry as an interrogator of authority but also as a source of resistance, love, and regeneration. From Brand, I learned how to see and gesture toward a world of gorgeous complexity using everyday, mundane, human things. From Nichol, I learned how to just have fun and play, and not take the thing or the act too seriously. From bissett, I learned how to use language and its parts as shapes—much like how a painter uses a palette knife, letters and phonemes and fragments can create texture and form, also sound and dissonance. 

Kate Siklosi : part three

What do you feel poetry can accomplish that other forms can’t? 

I’m not sure poetry “accomplishes” anything because to me that implies completion, and I prefer to think of poetry as a practice of leaving breadcrumbs or string to give us clues as to what came before and what comes after, but with no fixed destination. I live for that messy in medias res life, and ain’t sorry for it either 😉.

But I do think poetry does things other forms cannot, or does it differently. For me, poetry has a way of writing through the human experience without necessarily needing cohesion or precision—it is a way of suturing the gaps and absences of our individual and collective stories not to make them neatly whole, but to make their fragments and fissures sing, contrast, fugue. 

And, because I tend to work with precarious, decaying materials, I feel that poetry teaches us to listen and to let things be as they are without the need to over-narrativize them or fit them into something we think they should be. Like, for me, I can just let a leaf or a thing speak with the other objects I bring it into encounter with—it doesn’t matter if I or we recognize the language produced or not, or whether it forms a human-centric logic, but that it exists, it is as it is. There’s something very humbling about that. 

Kate Siklosi : part two

How do you know when a poem is finished?

This is a particularly interesting question for visual poets in my opinion, because you can always add but often can’t take away…for instance, when working with Letraset, there’s no editing out that extra letter snake that awkwardly protrudes into white space that should maybe just be white space. But then again, for me, visual poetry teaches a balance between “okay, that’s enough” and also “what the hell, live a little and add that extra thing cause yr heart or hand wants it—you do you.” 

I find knowing when to end more traditional lyric-based poetry to be a similar but different beast, because you’re not often relying on visual cues but can still, in similar ways, whimsically avoid or defer conclusion. I think in all my work I prefer to think of what’s enough for the time being, rather than what endings look, sound, or feel like. I like to leave a little left unsaid, too—it’s a way of inviting others in. I feel uncomfortable having the final word in much of anything creative. After all, aren’t we in this to create lines of connection and conversation? I want to know what others think about the thing I’m gesturing toward and make space for them, their ideas—I like leaving some room for the poetry to wander beyond the page and comingle with others.

Kate Siklosi : part one

Kate Siklosi lives, thinks, and creates in Dish With One Spoon Territory / Toronto, Canada. Her work includes leavings (Timglaset 2021), selvage (forthcoming, Invisible 2023), and five chapbooks of poetry. Her critical and creative work has been featured in various magazines, journals, and small press publications across North America, Europe, and the UK. She is also the curator of the Small Press Map of Canada and a co-founding editor of Gap Riot Press.

Photo credit: Jesse Pajuäär

What are you working on?

I’ve been experimenting a lot lately with different mediums and how they interact—mainly water, ink, and watercolour paints. I am currently finishing up a small series of petri dish poems that incorporate water, india ink, found objects, and fragments from the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I’m currently really loving experimenting with how different artistic media, different fluidities and reactions, interact with and undermine the presumed fixity of text.