Catherine Graham – Fevers of the Mind

A Fevers of the Mind Poetry Showcase from Catherine Graham

Bio: Catherine Graham is a poet, novelist, podcast host and creative writing instructor based in Toronto. Her eighth book, Æther: An Out-of-Body Lyric,was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award, Toronto Book Award, and won the Fred Kerner Book Award. The Celery Forest was named a CBC Best Book of the Year and was a finalist for the Fred Cogswell Award for Poetry. She teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto where she won an Excellence in Teaching Award, leads the Toronto International Festival of Authors’ Book Club, co-hosts The Hummingbird Podcast—part of the WNED PBS Amplify app, and is a judge for the CBC Poetry Prize. Put Flowers Around Us and Pretend We’re Dead: New and Selected Poems is her latest book. www.catherinegraham.com @catgrahampoet

www.catherinegraham.com She/her

Masks
Nature wore only one mask –
Since called Chaos.
- Ted Hughes, “Creation; Four Ages; Lycaon; Flood,” Tales from Ovid

I entered Chaos through the plastic mask
of anaesthesia. Styx to bones that don’t break,
just the lessening landscape beside a nipple
that never milked yet puckers pink. I need

a deeper slit on the left to secure clean margins
plus a sentinel undercut – Hospital déjà vu, 
a dawn re-entering as Sun dreams. No nail polish
on hands. Baby-naked beneath a stiff blue gown

falling open at the front without a pre-op grip.
How summer dissolves spring and autumn into masks
that seasons make from spin and tilt. I am made

more uneven above the heart. Wake up! 
Maternal presence never felt since her Christmas
death. The age she died hiding inside me.

Cloak 
after “Sobs Rack My Chest,” by Dorothy Molloy

I hide my power in a cloak I hoard as anger.
My jaw gears like a charging bull; 
hairs horn from my butting forehead.

Stick of flame, I bring fresh heat 
to a room like sun in sky. There is no edge 
from which to hang your escape. I whore surrender. 

Not bad, this giving up. No tit 
for tat just a hit in the chest
where you slip between heartbeats. 

Mushroom mouth.

Don’t say I don’t share my plumb line. No ledge 
on which to lay your lost self? Give in
to my configuration. Hang on to a happy organ. 

Be good and be dummy spewing out of my mouth. 
Sing sweetly to my spirit-level. And you are outside 
piling logs for relief. Even hunger needs a break. 

Now let’s pretend you’re mad again. Committed 
to a door with no handles; marionette strings 
sting sharp injections.

And you’ll keep coming back 
because I keep you
working on your own wreckage.

The Thread Is What Matters

The frog in the courtyard, a sign.
The moon bulges towards the horizon—
a frog, swallowed. Every

scene holds Ariadne’s thread. A maze 
we never got out of. That chill 
in the open field where the grove 

holds no tall yellow willow.
Only a bird remembers, flies
back, hovers. The thread is in her too.

Peas and Barbies 
after “Barbie,” by Dorothy Molloy

Make her naked and still she smiles, 
exposing breasts without nipples. 

Nipple. 

We giggled at the word in the secret book 
where the small arrow pointed.

Nipple. 
We said it at the same time.

I made a doll of mashed potato 
with nipple-peas on my plate. 

Take charge and spit. 
Witless move. Nana’s looking. 

Don’t play with your food says the line 
in her lips that melts the wizard in mine. 

She blinks the nippled world away. 
I give the world too much.

Fork more food in your mouth 
and keep your eyes shut; 

be an empty-headed thing 
with shredded carrot hair. 

Now roll on into Vegetable Land 
where potatoes rule and peas shrivel 

when told to stack up like tennis balls 
on a Prince racquet. 

Which one will tip the hill? 
This pea. That.

“Eat your meal. It’s getting cold. 
You’ll be hungry later.”

I’ll chew my hair.

“Nipple.” 

Wildflower 
in memory of Bruce Gillingham, 1929-2019

The condo took him away
from his garden. Pots
on the balcony, not the same.

By the lake, a field with few
wildflowers called to him.
He drove to where the city 

kept spreading—holes where
other condos would rise.
Ox-eye daisy, Queen Anne’s lace, 

Butter and eggs, Chicory—
he transplanted his finds along 
the waiting edges. Fox, skunk 

and rabbit watched, but not 
the passersby as he dug more holes
to root the living. Growth took. 

So he planted seeds, nothing invasive, 
just more of the already there to richen 
texture and colour. Some milkweed 

to coax monarchs back. I see
him—tending, tamping, close 
to ninety, down on his knees.

“Now I Was Not In This Dream” by Catherine Graham for Before I Turn Into Gold Online Anthology

Now I Was Not In This Dream

originally posted in You’re Our Man Anthology.

But you were, Leonard.
We sat night-cornered in a café
wringing the lyrics of this poem,
ironing the lines with our mouths.

Letters like severed legs marched out.
They flattened to our will. Evidence
ballooned by us as cries in thought bubbles.

(poetic response to “Morning Song” from The Spice-Box of Earth)

www.catherinegraham.com
Tweets by catgrahampoet
https://www.instagram.com/catgrahampoet/?hl=en
https://linktr.ee/CatGrahamPoet
Forthcoming from Palimpsest Press, 2022: The Most Cunning Heart (novel)


Shortlisted for the Toronto Book Awards, praise for Æther: An Out-of-Body Lyric:
“Catherine Graham’s seventh book of poetry is an intricate reverie, in poetry and prose, which floats back and forth in time and between memories, dreams and reflections.” – Toronto Star
 
“It is a masterpiece. The melding of poetry and prose into a beautiful and heartbreaking skein, gradual revelation, going back/going forward, weaving in and out, repeating and broadening the meaning as you go. A journey that is fascinating, heartrending, and courageous.” – Marilyn Gear Pilling 

A Fevers of the Mind Quick-9 Interview with Catherine Graham

A Fevers of the Mind Quick-9 Interview with Catherine Graham

with Catherine Graham:

Q1: When did you start writing and first influences?

Catherine: I began writing poetry after the deaths of my parents. They died during my undergraduate years. Mother, my first year, father, my last. Grief hit me hard but also became a catalyst to my creative journey which I expand on below. First influences include Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Bishop and Anne Sexton.

Q2: Who are your biggest influences today?

Catherine: The creative process is my biggest influence. I pay attention to what triggers my imagination. I follow energy lines from various sources: dreams, dream lines, nature, words, music, books and art and coax them into shape so that I have a draft to play with and see if I might craft it into a poem.

Q3: Any pivotal moment when you knew you wanted to be a writer?

Catherine: After my parents’ back to back deaths, I was consumed with grief. A worried friend suggested I see a therapist. The therapist suggested I keep a journal. This helped but it wasn’t a cure. One day I started playing with words—images, rhythms and memories of my parents, the water-filled limestone quarry I grew up beside. I fell into a portal where time and pain disappeared and when I came back out I knew something pivotal had happened. Eventually I worked up the courage to share what I’d written with that family friend and she told me I was writing poetry. Of course I knew what poetry was but I didn’t think that I could participate in such an endeavour. At that point the only poems I’d been exposed to were written by bearded men now long dead. But once that connection was made, poetry became the core of my life.

Q4: Who has helped you most with writing?

Catherine: I’d have to say my parents. Their deaths fueled my creative life, plus the water-filled limestone quarry we lived beside. My long term editor, Paul Vermeersch, has also helped me immensely on the poetry journey. He’s edited all my poetry collections (except my first chapbook, The Watch). Pupa, The Red Element, Winterkill, Her Red Hair Rises with the Wings of Insects, The Celery Forest, Æher: An-Out-of-Body Lyric. His belief and continued support mean the world to me. Exchanging poems with writer friends such as James Wyshynski and Ayesha Chatterjee is also extremely helpful.

Q5: Where did you grow up and how did that influence your writing & did any travels away from home influence your work?

Catherine: I was born in Hamilton but grew up in small town Ontario. The Niagara Escarpment behind our house in Grimsby became the first landscape I loved, followed by the water-filled limestone quarry beside our bungalow in Ridgeway. When poetry charged into my life, it led me to Northern Ireland where I studied and lived during the 90’s. I love the Irish and Northern Irish poets: Michael Longley, Joan and Kate Newmann, Kathleen McCracken (Canadian and Northern Irish!), and more. I’m grateful many have become dear friends.

Q6: What do you consider your most meaningful work you’ve done creatively so far to you?

Catherine: I’ve written seven collections of poetry and one novel (Quarry) and they are all meaningful to me. Perhaps they serve as one long creative piece. However, the most meaningful of the lot is my recent collection: Æther: An Out-of-Body Lyric. It’s a hybrid book—poetry, prose, memoir, lyric essay—a homage to family, to cancer and to the strange windings of truth.

Q7: Favorite activities to relax?

Catherine: I love walking, especially in nature. It helps me process thoughts and emotions and deepens my thinking so insights occur, synchronicities happen, and questions or concerns I’m currently grappling with gain new perspectives. Walking brings comfort, joy and balance to my life.

Lake swimming is another activity I love. Front crawl, breast stroke—back and forth. I become one with water. I also love to visit art galleries. I adore looking at art.

Q8: What is a favorite line/stanza from a poem of yours or others?

Catherine: I’ve been working with dream lines lately. Half-awake in the dark, I jot them down in a bedside notebook and hope I’m able to decipher my scribbles in the morning. My mother rarely visits my dreams but before my imminent departure to leave on a poetry reading tour in Northern Ireland, after a very long absence, she said these comforting words: “You’re a game changer. A post-autumn woman.” That line morphed with a dream I had about Seamus Heaney and became part of a recently published poem “Sleep Patterns for Seamus Heaney.” I was honoured to have it appear in University College Dublin / Museum of Literature Ireland’s new journal Belfield Literary Review.

Sleep Patterns for Seamus Heaney

We hold sleep patterns for him.
Clip flowers from seeds; mist

hours from worries
into a line’s heartbeat.

Tears are rinsers,
not energy takers.

Never waterfalls.
We don’t envy

his gift, we coax
something out—

Take me, for instance,
my dead

mother’s voice—
You’re a game changer, a post-autumn woman.

Q9: Any recent or forthcoming projects that you’d like to promote?

Catherine:

Well, there’s Æther: An-Out-of-Body Lyric as mentioned above. It’s now out and available for purchase. My second novel, The Most Cunning Heart. appears Spring 2022 and my eighth poetry collection appears in 2023. Some upcoming events include presenting at the CAA conference (https://canadianauthors.org/national/presenters/) leading the Toronto Festival of Authors Book Club (https://festivalofauthors.ca/book-club/) and reading at Word on the Street (https://toronto.thewordonthestreet.ca/) and Gloucester Poetry Festival (http://www.gloucesterpoetryfestival.uk/). Oh, and I wrote about Æther: An-Out-of-Body Lyric here: https://alllitup.ca/Blog/2021/Lit-Locale-Broken-Landscapes-in-AEther-An-Out-of-Body-Lyric.

Readers may also find me on Twitter and Instagram: @catgrahampoet or they may visit my website: www.catherinegraham.com.

Thanks so much for the interview!

Æther: An Out-of-Body Lyric

https://www.instagram.com/catgrahampoet/?hl=en
https://linktr.ee/CatGrahamPoet
Forthcoming from Palimpsest Press, 2022: The Most Cunning Heart (novel)

Shortlisted for the Toronto Book Awards, praise for Æther: An Out-of-Body Lyric:
“Catherine Graham’s seventh book of poetry is an intricate reverie, in poetry and prose, which floats back and forth in time and between memories, dreams and reflections.” – Toronto Star

“It is a masterpiece. The melding of poetry and prose into a beautiful and heartbreaking skein, gradual revelation, going back/going forward, weaving in and out, repeating and broadening the meaning as you go. A journey that is fascinating, heartrending, and courageous.” – Marilyn Gear Pilling

https://icefloepress.net/2020/04/20/six-poems-by-catherine-graham/

https://icefloepress.net/three-poems-by-catherine-graham/