The Meaning of Leaving

Women’s stories can take many different forms. One of those forms is poetry. With poetry, much can be said in so few words and that’s the case with the poems of Kate Rogers in her collection The Meaning of Leaving.

Rogers’ poems explore the theme of departure, including her family home, an abusive marriage, a homeland, and an adopted home.

In addition to domestic violence, Rogers writes about forms of violence that include political oppression in Hong Kong and China and homelessness in Canada. And she makes note of “society’s thoughtless acceptance of violence towards women,” as her publicist points out.

There is much that can be imagined in poetry while also related to the poet’s life. In an interview, Kate Rogers said, “As poets we each have our own way of processing experience through art.” She has included some ekphrastic poems that respond to images of photographer Diane Arbus.

The poems in the first section of the book, “Unreal City,” are more directly autobiographical as they describe Rogers’ experience of emotional abuse when growing up and emotional and physical abuse in her last marriage. Her former husband died during the pandemic and while the abuse happened almost twenty years ago, the experience was brought to the fore. There was “enough distance to create art out of very difficult material,” she said.

In a poem titled “In the First House,” there’s this line: “I was father’s Stupid Girl!”

“Derrick” is referred to in some of the poems, including “Derrick’s Fist” in which the speaker refers to herself, with a spreading bruise, as “Stupid Girl.”

Emotion in poetry can be expressed through all the senses of sound, scent, touch, and imagery as well as with metaphor. In the last stanza of “Derrick’s Fist” are the lines: “His fist a shadow puppet / on the wall. A meteor / flaming out as I walked / through the door.”

The title poem, “The Meaning of Leaving,” is a form of glosa with the beginning line and end line of each of the three stanzas a line from Bei Dao’s “Requiem.” One of the haunting lines is: “To be lost is a kind of leaving.”

Poetry can be visceral, as in the case of “The Don Jail Ghost,” about a female ghost who took her own life in the old Toronto jail in 1890.

Ghosts are referred to in “Hungry Ghost Month in the City of Protest.” In her notes, Rogers explains that “During Ghost month, the Gates of Hell are believed to open, releasing ghosts and demons.” In Hong Kong, into the summer of 2019, paper objects were burned “in temple furnaces to send wealth and comfort to deceased loved ones.”

The first poem in the book, “Unreal City,” refers to a time when the speaker, on a bridge over the Don Valley in Toronto says, “I still fear the jostling gusts / and the quivering leap in me.” While acknowledging other city locations and an intentional killing of several people on a city street, the speaker has survived much and yet there is an ongoing tremor of fear, as if a ghost from the past.

Kate Rogers’ poems are written with vulnerability and honesty. As Rogers has done, other women may be inspired to craft their life stories into poems and stories to be shared and to seek support as well as emotional and physical safety from danger.