Q&A with Kathryn Reese

Kathryn Reese lives on Peramangk land in South Australia. She works in medical science & enjoys road trips, hiking & chasing frogs to record their calls for science. Kathryn’s work can be found in The Engine Idling, Epistemic Literary & Red Room Poetry.

‘Elegy for the Southern Beaches’ is a powerful response to South Australia’s algal bloom crisis. The poem is imbued with a sense of grief and urgency, as you call out government inaction and lament ‘the water / warm the algal / mass unbroken the hungry / expanding / this colony’. How did it feel to write this poem? And did you always intend to include journalists and ‘the minister for the ocean’ as characters, or did they arrive later on?

The minister and the news crew appeared as a complete image. I heard a news radio interview where the journalist repeatedly asked a government minister if they had visited beaches affected by the algal bloom. This seemed like such an important and yet entirely performative visit. The way the minister of religion visits the dying. In writing this poem I was caught in that sort of grief.

Your bio mentions that you enjoy ‘hiking and chasing frogs to record their calls for science’! In what ways has listening closely to nature informed your creative practice? (Bonus question: do you have a favourite frog?)

I think there’s a softening and opening of awareness that enables both listening and poetry. There’s attention to the small details: the easily overlooked elements of nature like frogs and bugs and algae. Then you start feeling into rhythms of presence and absence: seasons, waves, the calls of frogs or birds. I hope all those things are present in the poem somehow, as image or syntax.

I think listening to nature also teaches a patience with silence that’s quite helpful for poetry… I can be comfortable waiting for the next line or image, I don’t always have to worry about where the next line is going or coming from, I just wait for it to show up.

I have so many favourite frogs but one of my favourites is the Eastern Dwarf Tree frog, Litoria fallax. It’s quite tiny and one of the frogs you can hear during the day. It’s a frog that really has a lot to say, its call has the rhythm of an excited child telling a story.

I’m also interested to hear about the humans who have shaped your writing practice. Can you tell me about some of your favourite poets?

Poets are like frogs, I really have too many favourites! The book I’m really enjoying at the moment is Stephanie Burt’s anthology Super Gay Poems. There’s an essay with each poem exploring both the context and craft of each poem. It’s so good.

 The humans who shape my writing practice are the ones around me, my online poetry group who are mainly based in the UK and my local open mic night community. The practices of listening and being heard are so powerful.

Ruby Hillsmith

Ruby Hillsmith is a writer, editor and poet living on Wurundjeri land. She was a Writers Victoria Writeability Poetry Fellow, a Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellow, and co-editor-in-chief of the 31st edition of RMIT’s Visible Ink. She has mentored local and national Writeability groups on behalf of Writers Victoria.