katie o’brien : my grandmother listened to elvis: reflections on micro moonlights

 

 

 

my mother’s pandemic project has been organising family photographs – boxes and albums filled with memories, in no particular order, some of them captioned and carefully preserved, others comprised entirely of people whose names she doesn’t know. in some ways, my beethoven project is very similar to hers. an attempt to catalogue half-rememberings. an attempt to make permanent the fleeting.

these poems are partial answers to questions therapists have asked me for thirteen years. where were you when your grandmother died? how did she explain her whipple scar to you? do you remember when you first heard moonlight? who told you about the jaundice? where did that blue couch end up?

these poems are a process, and I’m not sure where they will take me in the end. I learn more about myself and my grief through the making of them than I do trying to articulate the specifics. sometimes, I find more healing in making my way through the source material than I do in combing through memories. I definitely find healing in the collaboration: the connection to the music, to rob, to my family – to my sibling, who created the beautiful cover art for this chapbook. all I can say at this moment is that I’m excited to keep exploring.

 

 

 

katie o’brien is a poet, community worker, and Netflix enthusiast originally from St. John’s, Ktaqamkuk, on unceded Beothuk land. They currently live in Mohkínstsis, on Treaty 7 territory, and recently founded blood orange, an experimental poetry tarot. micro moonlights is their first above/ground chapbook. katie dislikes lying, sings a lot, and doesn’t kill bugs.