Kay McKenzie Cooke, Poet
October 16, 2011 *walking through the Octagon
How can one not love
this drizzle?
Burns’ dark glower
as I rush by
under splattered cover.
Ah, there. See. That girl
in the fake-fur,
tiger-skin hat
smiling to herself
does too.
Kay McKenzie Cooke.
Kaye is a poet living in Dunedin, New Zealand. Published and working on new ideas for books, the style of Kay’s poetry delights me as much as her subject matter. I find ‘home’ when I read her, the time and space I grew up in and still remember. I asked if I might interview her and here’s how it went.
Kay told me that she has been writing poems since she first learned to write, with her mother encouraging her to submit her work for publishing in the Cousin Betty pages of the local regional newspaper, Invercargill’s Southland Times.
Like so many of us, she was influenced by English childrens writer, Enid Blyton and perhaps, like Enid, Kay was prolific. At a very young age she began writing a poem then a short story for the newspaper on alternate weeks.
Back then, her poems rhymed and this, she believes, was a good grounding for the poet and writer she has become, giving her an early sense of rhythm, pace and a feel for the way a line looks and sounds. She also mentioned the fact that this prolific childhood career gave her a taste for seeing her name print.
As a teenager, she veered off into very personal and angst-ridden poetry, free of rhyme. Married and raising a family, Kay was in her early thirties before she really committed to a yearning to extend her poetry and publish work again. She attended writing courses during those years in an attempt to stretch what she felt was cliche-ridden poetry and create publishable material.
As her early 40s rolled around, Kay finally had ten years of what she felt was real application behind her and she had achieved a distinctive poetic voice of her own. Her work was being published in literary magazines.
Something I’m always curious to ask a successful poet is ‘how to walk away, deciding that poem is finished?’. Kay confessed to being a bit of a meddler and that there’s always something to add or take away and so her books are the only places where her poems remain untouched.
Kay explained, when a poem stops talking back to me, thats’s a sign it is complete.
Her poems are the stuff of life, authentic and often verbatim, although she explains, ... sometimes I change subtle things so that the poem hangs together better – real life is often a clumsy artist.
A recent poem saw two seperate events occur in the same place at different times and she welded those events together to give the poem more strength. She prefers to avoid slipping into a prosaic rendition of reality and reshapes life with the intention of creating strong poems. To do this, she remains conscious of the impact each line makes as the poem comes to life.
Influences have varied throughout Kay’s life. There was the ‘dead poets phase’ when she was a teenager and names like Dylan Thomas, Robert Browning, John Keats and Gerald Manley Hopkins appear on that list. Later she discovered New Zealand poets Sam Hunt, Alistair Campbell and Ruth Dallas, with the ‘whispered’ inclusion of Rod McKuen during her late teens.
Recent years have been influenced by Seamus Heaney, Judith Wright, Amy Clampitt, Les Murray, Cilla McQueen and Fleur Adcock.
One of those connections that link us without our knowing appeared in the next part of her answer when she wrote of an English lecturer at Otago University called John Dolan ... a favourite lecturer of mine that semester I studied poetry with him as my professor.
She wrote, John very much influenced how I approached writing. He and his wife Katherine have since become good friends, but I would say that they now encourage and support my writing, rather than influencing it.
Answering my questions, Kay came to the conclusion that she was without influence at this moment in time and wondered whether she needed to discover a new influence or rediscover an old one.
These days she is at her writing best when her mind is being refreshed with new images and sensations ... journeys are a source of inspiration, she explains. Out and about taking in the landscape, or exploring a different place and all it has to offer.
Family has become another wellspring and she talks of brimming with ideas when she spends time with her own extended family ... It has something to do with discovering my own place in the scheme of things, with rediscovering my background and in the memories that are stirred up by the conversations and reminiscing that goes on.
Kay enjoys writing in cafes, disappearing amongst strangers, overhearing snippets of conversations makes her want to write. She carries a notebook to capture the present moment, sometimes finding poems in those notes at a later date.
I was curious to know how, if at all, blogging had affected her poetry. I found both Kay and her work via her blog. She explained how, as a child, one of her other hobbies was writing to penpals around the world. Blogging is surely the adult equivalent and she finds it encouraging to have a ‘band of friends’ from different countries, supporting and encouraging her work.
Oddly enough, Kay doesn’t look for inspiration on the web, and confesses to preferring to read of a blog friend’s grump about the washing not drying on the line. I feel more connected to them through their ordinary observations of normal life than any name dropping about who they have rubbed shoulders with in a foreign cafe ...
Kay has had two books of poetry published and is now working on a short story collection, a possible novel and as always, more poetry, with a third collection in mind. She has been tempted to include photograhy with the writing but the idea is still new. She also intends to continue writing a personal journal.
In ‘real life’, Kay is a fulltime early childhood teacher who has spent the last year working with infants and toddlers. Babies are wondrous beings and I love the ones I look after but I am coming home too tired to think, let alone put words down on paper. Something has to be done about that, as I can feel the writer within shrivelling.
As with every interview, I ask about travel, the places best-loved and preferred modes of travel. Kay would love to wander again and mentioned her very New Zealand OE (overseas experience) back in the 1970s. These days she longs to return to the UK and France. Her favourite places were Scotland and France, although she would love to visit Ireland too.
One of hers sons is living in Japan, raising her granddaughter there with his Japanese wife. There is a trip planned there in the near future.
And like so many New Zealanders, she is unable to contemplate the thought of group travel, preferring to be an independent traveler, staying in backpacker hostels and using a rail pass or rental car to move around.
If you would like to read more of Kay’s poetry, you can visit her website
and you will find her books for sale on her blog Kay McKenzie Cooke
Kay McKenzie Cooke, New Zealand Poet, poet in Poet
Reader Comments (1)
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