Leavings as Beginnings
Content Warning: mentions domestic violence with quoted description; one poem describes suicide.
I often find I can’t slow down enough to read poetry. That the forces of modern society push me subconsciously, wearily.
Produce, don’t think. React, don’t reflect.
And that’s exactly why I wanted to read The Meaning of Leaving, the latest poetry collection by Kate Rogers. To remove myself from an invisible agenda of hustle and reflect on what it means to leave again and again. And why.
I’m not a poet and I don’t read a lot of poetry, so I was intrigued by the way Rogers spun and wove images of leaving, attaching them to place, people, relationships, to states of being, and even to the person she once was.
Rogers and I have had similar yet different journeys. After living in Hong Kong and mainland China for more than two decades she left those new homes and returned to Canada. I always wonder what motivates others, like me, to live in different countries. I also wonder what really motivated me to return to Canada, three decades (France, England, Australia) after I first left.
Through various bird motifs, including sketches, Rogers teases apart themes of belonging, home, moving, and rebirth: a dove in Tokyo, a crow “riding the wind,” sprinting mallard ducks, a cob pigeon and sparrows, trumpeter swans. All serve to underline themes of migration, change, hope and a very female desire to fly free and unencumbered.
As we read, Rogers herself changes. She doesn’t shy away from presenting images of violence from political oppression to death and her own experiences of emotional abuse and domestic violence.
Her poetry is grounded in reality (“When you punched me in the eye / the pain cleared my vision”) and yet magical and powerful (“a sparrow, wingtips / meeting in prayer, / drags the dark robe of twilight / across the pavement,”). She nudges the reader to rethink anger, strength and resilience from a female perspective.
Leaving is fraught with difficulties and yet we seek it out again and again because it’s part of making larger changes, part of experimenting and believing in ourselves, part of arriving and beginning and growing. As humans, we are confusing, confused, and full of contradictions. Rogers helps to capture these nuances and sends us, like the yellow warbler, off in search of a better story of ourselves in a “flurry of golden light.”
The Meaning of Leaving, poems by Kate Rogers. Ace of Swords Publishing 2024.