Selvage
We don't choose the stories we inherit, but we can stitch new futures from the threads of our past .
Selvage is a work of salvaging and selving, of salvaging a self from disparate elements. Fragments from the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the language of trees talking to one another through mycelial networks, familial stories, and ruminations on the cusp of motherhood are literally and lyrically torn apart, spun, and sewn together to create a collage of what it means to be human, which is to say, what it means to be incomplete and fragmented. Mashing up the traditional lyric with innovative form and visual poetry, this experimental work is deeply personal, but it also attempts to gesture towards the human experience by showing the unfinished seams of our existence: the messy ends, beautiful twists, and unexpected new beginnings sewn together with intertwined threads of intergenerational trauma and love.
Kate Siklosi is a poet, scholar, publisher, and teacher who lives in Dish With One Spoon Territory / Toronto, Canada. Her work includes leavings (Timglaset 2021), which sold into its second printing, and six chapbooks of poetry. Her critical and creative work has been featured across North America, Europe, and the UK. She is also Sessional Faculty at McMaster University, curator of the Small Press Map of Canada, and co-founding editor of the feminist experimental small press Gap Riot Press.