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HER OWN LANGUAGE
Kathleen Strafford is originally from Ohio, USA. She gained an MA from Leeds Trinity University, UK, in 2017. Her poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and webzines, including Panoply, Algebra of Owls; Clear Poetry; Fat Damsel; Tom and Stan Wick; The Interpreter's House;Inspiring Futures; Cinnamen Press's Reaching Out and Ilkley Festival Anthology. Her debut collection 'Her Own Language' was published in January 2018. Kathleen hosts 'The Runcible Spoon, a poetry open mic night in Morley, Leeds in September 2018. She is also an artist and musician.
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This is Kathleen Strafford's first collection, and it has received enthusiastic reviews.
"As her cover art shows, she is a visual as well as verbal artist, and the themes of her poetry, and its style, consistently respond to and use images, seen and then reflected on. She takes as ekphrastic prompts not only painters and sculptors from among the canon (Picasso, Van Gogh, Rodin) but personal photographs and remembered snapshots of life. This synthesis of elevated high art and the minutiae of family histories reveals her as a highly observant poet, whose imagery finds that fine balance between rare and accessible."
- Hannah Stone "Kathleen Strafford’s Her Own Language is jazzy with nostalgia, jiving its way through sex, love and death by way of wet dreams and weird asides – to use her phrase, ‘the delirium of beautiful things’. Its breezy tone disguises darker ideas: a sister is ‘a girl who needs/ a winter jacket/ but keeps stumbling/ into a closet where/ men are empty/ overcoats’. A car accident involving a cat has a very intriguing twist indeed. With its unexpected rhythms and its elegies and exaltations, this is a collection that’s simply great fun to read." – Bill Greenwell "Strafford's poetry sings to women. It is perceptive and challenging. The words just seem to flow from her, forcing the emotions to erupt. It is rhythmic and beautifully poignant. It is laugh out loud and deeply moving. It is life and death. Love these poems." – Liz Mistry "From the instinctive communicative energy of the passionate child who scribble(s) on each page, to the mature scrutiny of the vernacular through a kaleidoscope (that) will not alter / its ever-changing / view, Strafford's poems offer precise explorations of life in high definition. Ideas and phrases spark surprising – sometimes shocking – relays, probing the spaces around experience, their forms precisely tuned to their restless exploration.
I am, writes Strafford, perpetually waiting for a thought so passionate and alive / it has an architecture of its own. On the evidence of this mercurial collection, she rarely has to wait long. From a toad heard in the darkness, to the click of a high-heeled shoe, to the knees of grown-ups seen from beneath a card table, each image – pulsing with resonance and reflection – is palpably, viscerally alive. This is everyday language in flux, the place where words go / after they are spoken, and Strafford doesn’t let a single one escape." – Oz Hardwick Leeds Trinity University, 2017 |
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Listen to Kathleen on radio in Ohio on this Soundcloud recording:
https://soundcloud.com/thesummitfm/summit-focus-kathleen-strafford |
Photo of Mom on the Beach 1950
(from "Her Own Language")
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