Kate Brady is a local poet wise beyond her years. She is affable, strong-willed, sensible, and kind. She is dedicated to poetry, family, and community. She is the genuine article.
Treat yourself and a friend or loved one to an early Christmas present. Hear this remarkable young woman at The Reader’s Café tomorrow night, December 22, from 7:30-8:30, when she will perform as featured poet and then answer questions from the audience.
To acquaint you with Brady and to whet your appetite, I am taking the liberty of including the whole text of her response to a few general questions I ask of poets when I get the chance. Her insight and revelation rises to the surface in clear tones as her conversational prose waxes eloquent with respect to her art and her philosophy.
Below her own introduction which immediately follows is a poem that melds Brady’s roots, her keen sense of perception, and her distillation of a city’s occupants, speaking to the universality of people whether from the farm or the city.
I began writing in high school, and after taking a few creative writing classes in college, I knew I’d like to pursue an MFA in poetry. I received my MFA in May from Columbia College Chicago, where I also taught first-year writing courses.
My appreciation for poetry became magnanimous in graduate school, where I stumbled upon some of my favorite poets: Jo McDougall, A. Van Jordan, Frank X. Walker, Natasha Trethewey, and Aimee Nezhukumatathil. While in Chicago, I also became a member of several different writing communities, as teacher, student, friend, and facilitator.
I was raised in Hanover, PA on a horse farm. Most all of my extended family lives in Hanover or just outside. So, I grew up with a strong sense of family. My cousins and animals were my best friends.
A country lifestyle has most influenced my writing, although it took moving away and perspective to write most of those poems. I went to James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA, for my BA in both English and Media Arts & Design.
Then, I moved to Chicago where I received my MFA. Time and distance have been my best tools, even better than a perfectly sharpened pencil point. (And I love sharp pencils so much I used to carry a tiny sharpener to class with me.)
As all poets know, your life quickly becomes one large poem. Everything to me is a metaphor, and since discovering this, my life has been that much more vibrant and exact. Writers know things are meant to be by the connections they make between events.
I can’t imagine living without poetry. And I’m not saying this to put non-poets down, because I think everyone has a poet inside them somewhere. It’s not about vocabulary or good handwriting or saying lofty things; poetry is merely honesty, and everyone has the potential for that.
I also think every community should offer creative writing and/or arts classes. While living in Chicago, I volunteered at the men’s homeless shelter in the basement of my church. I met a few guys who had been writing poems and sharing them with each other, and I jumped at the opportunity to start a weekly writing workshop for them.
Poetry was the one steady thing in their lives and the only thing not accompanied by bad fortune. They wrote to get through the day, and then they started a poetry reading series at a community center.
There are so many other people and communities that could use the outlet of poetry (or any kind of art) to get through their own trials. Poetry is absolutely indispensable to me, to you, and to the world.
Grit
It comes from warm blood, movement
of breath, chest exorcising
daily. There are hints
of gasoline, sawdust, tire tread,
a woman’s perfume. It smells
like my father
at dusk in the summertime,
like the construction worker beside you
on the rush hour train.
Yes, it’s refreshing.It’s pedestrians leaning
into the wind, as if gravity
likes the upper body better,
the chest, the neck, the forehead.
People bend above the bellybutton
when they forget their hat,
hands on their ears and elbows forward
like they’re entering the parallel squat rack.It’s two feet moving in different directions,
hitting the ground at precise times
widening weight.
It’s feet in rubbers in muck.- Kate Brady