look there and there
Kylie Gellatly
I know the end
Kylie Gellatly
a great many made many
Kylie Gellatly
the beckoning stops
Kylie Gellatly
twenty years of my life
Kylie Gellatly
Artist’s Statement
This work responds to the many facets of isolation experienced over the past year and charts its way through the translation of that experience into poetry, where the idea of working with limitation lends itself to expression through a practice of processing. It has allowed me to express a voice that wants to chew doom to a pulp and spit out a new form, the experience of which feels spectral in its urgency. This process-based hybrid work, in its structured and limited space, offers a way to explore the textures of voice amidst a rapidly-changing world. The source text for this project is The Arctic Diary of Russell Williams Porter, which, like any arctic narrative, is a story of survival in an unlivable climate. The words Williams used to describe his saga subjected themselves to an allegorical parallel once cut from Williams’ pages and rearranged onto mine. Over time, the collection morphed into something that pleads for harmony in all of nature and begs the attention of the reader to the finite lives we live.
about the artist
Kylie Gellatly is the author of The Fever Poems, forthcoming from Finishing Line Press (Summer 2021). Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Palette Poetry, GASHER, Iterant Magazine, Petrichor, La Vague Journal, Feral, Literary North, SWWIM, and Malasaña. Kylie is the poetry editor for Mount Holyoke Review and the book reviews editor for Green Mountains Review. She has been awarded fellowships to the Juniper Writing Institute and the Vermont Studio Center. Kylie lives in Western Massachusetts and is a Frances Perkins Scholar at Mount Holyoke College. For more, visit www.kyliegellatly.com.