Kate Camp
Kate Camp is the author of four collections of poetry, all from Victoria University Press: Unfamiliar Legends of the Stars (1998), Realia (2001), Beauty Sleep (2005) and The Mirror of Simple Annihilated Souls (2010) where ‘Mute Song’ first appeared.
Camp comments: ‘This poem was inspired by a news story about a black swan in Germany which appeared to have fallen in love with an enormous plastic paddle boat in the shape of a white swan.
‘I wrote it after hearing the Canadian poet Christian Bök speak in Wellington. Bök's work, with its crazy ambition and gigantic scope, reminded me that poetry need not be limited to the possible, the real or the confessional; territories in which I had previously spent a lot – maybe too much – time.
‘As well as this poem in the voice of a swan, my 2010 collection The Mirror of Simple Annihilated Souls includes poems written from the perspective of a donor kidney, a man with a sixty-year-long bout of hiccups, a one-armed Austrian pianist, and the white whale Moby-Dick.
‘I think exposure to Bök’s expansive poetic ego gave me license to explore this wider range of avatars, so I am happy that “Mute Song” has now been published in his hometown of Toronto, in the literary journal Brick.’
Links
New Zealand Book Council writer file
Victoria University Press: The Mirror of Simple Annihilated Souls
