Part Two: An interview with Australian author, essayist and poet, Kathryn Pentecost
Janice: Kathryn, I've just completed reading your Metamorphosis Poems 1980 - 2020. With poetry, I'll often skip one or two, and land where I can give my whole, but I found with your poems that each spoke to me very directly. I wanted to spend time sinking into the varied worlds you were exploring. I chose to read a poem a day thus I have decided to choose just one poem to focus my questions on. Your title 'In the heat' reached not only out but surrounded me. 'In the heat' appears to be born out of suburbia, as well as a more urban landscape, and the edges of elsewhere...can you expand on its themes for us... Kathryn: 'In the heat' was written in 1989 when I had moved to St Mary's in the outer western suburbs of Sydney. It was one in a series of poems I wrote at that time. St Marys was an alien landscape to me. I had previously lived close to the city of Sydney. The poem is the expression of the profound dislocation I felt at that time, as wel...