About the Work: Kate Pyontek
In our “About the Work” series, Olga Mexina and Tom Sokolowski ask recent contributors for insight into their writing or for current sources of inspiration. Read Kate Pyontek's work in SER Vol. 42.2.
“Drupe and bloom” started in my kitchen one afternoon in 2018 as I was cutting up a mango, making a mess of juice and peels and sucking at the pit to get the last bits of fruit. I was thinking about what we outgrow, about the change and risk growth demands. There’s a precarious and often meandering experimentation required in the perpetual process of building a life, and sometimes the attempts are gross or messy or don’t taste so great. The poem is an incantation of boldness, of letting weirdness ferment and accepting the gross in pursuit of effervescence. The last line alludes to a quote attributed to Dom Pérignon about tasting champagne. This poem would not exist without essential feedback and conversations with Colette Cosner and Peter Quirk.
“Carromancy” was written in spring 2023 after a power outage one night at an artist residency. During the outage, three of us sat in a studio burning candles one artist had made and talking about artistic process. Much like “Drupe and bloom” this poem is interested in personal process, and specifically in how we shape ourselves and become shaped by attempts, failures, and disruptions. I’m also very interested in divination as an oblique strategy for life questions, and in the slippery role of intention and action in both self-making and art-making. The poem makes reference to David Craig’s artwork throughout. I’m indebted to Hannah Nahar for invaluable feedback on this poem.
KATE PYONTEK is a writer and artist living in New England. Their poetry is published or forthcoming in Poetry, Ecotone, Shō Poetry Journal, New Ohio Review, the lickety~split, Hunger Mountain, and elsewhere.
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