NWW Issue 9 Spring and Summer 2018

NORTH WEST WORDS
SPRING / SUMMER 2018 ISSUE 9
… “I will change pounds to sterling, while they're
still worth something, while we have the choice.”
The oubliette that is opened in 'Something you see in the movies' concerns male privilege, and
a room with two girls in it, and a bathroom:
… “but the tiles are cold on my palms
and the tiles are cold on my knees..”
She performs oral sex but only because she is told and because 'adrenaline beats dopamine' and
because the dominant myth of a society that glorifies obedience to the male hides the real meaning
of the verb 'to rape' in oubliettes of their own mythmaking. This is a poem that deserves a lot of
attention. And discussion.
One of the ways the poet assuages her trauma is through a belief in a gentler type of supernatural.
‘Meeting Tink in a bar in heaven' is the best of these poems. The other is 'Adrenaline and sassafras'.
I enjoyed the way Garrett plays with our expectations here, as in the last couplet:
.. “and tells me how I'd love her new friends
because they are absolute angels.”
As the collection draws to a close the poem 'Less like fiction' sees the poet in a healthy and
nurturing relationship. The nightmares are more distant now, nightmares where she doesn't know if
she'll ‘make it out of these oubliettes alive.' She has though. She has written and lived survival.
Her partner has suffered trauma too, and they both are entering a new summer, a new season of
hope. The last two poems remember their wedding vows and the children she has carried to full
term and those she hasn't in 'Gravida 5, Parity 3'. Gravida describes the number of confirmed
pregnancies that a woman has regardless of the outcome. She recalls her first little never-sprouted,
and as the pamphlet closes we are left with an image of small scout mapping a universe its mother
shall never know. Parity is defined as the number of births that a woman has had after twenty
weeks gestation. These children mark the way forward even as she looks back at the children she
has lost.
Kate Garrett is known on the poetry scene as founding editor of Three Drops Press/ Three Drops
from a Cauldron, and Picaroon Poetry. This pamphlet assures her authority in a collection that
brings its reader into the underworld and overworld that gifted us a poet that looks back in order to
look forward with altered iris. Published by Indigo Dreams this is a pamphlet that will serve as a lantern
of light for those hampered by roots on their path out of the forest. A must buy.
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