Moon Writing by Catherine Graham and Robert Frede Kenter

Review by John Oughton

Moon Writing is an unusual collaboration featuring Catherine Graham’s poetry and Robert Frede Kenter’s photographs. This is not a traditional ekphrastic effort in which the poems respond directly to the art, or vice versa. Kenter explains the genesis of their book in an opening Statement: “This project emerged out of a collaboration between myself and Canadian writer Catherine Graham for Ice Floe Press’s Cassandra/Chorale series… I invited a number of international writers and artists to deconstruct canonical works, whether myths and fairytales or “classics of word literature.” Traces of this process linger in poems that refer to myths such as those about Orpheus, Eurydice, and Persephone.

The pairings of art and poetry are intuitive: the visuals often seem to capture the mood or tone, rather than the imagery, of the poems. Kenter’s photos are highly saturated and contrasty, sometimes revealing a recognizable scene or object, often explosions of pure colour and graininess. There are images of nature, but also of industrial detritus and what look like abandoned buildings. Similarly, Graham pushes against the bounds of lyrical poetry, with unexpected leaps, allusions, and imaginative use of words. In “The Sleeping Equation,” the second stanza reads:

Tremble in sleep.
They iambed the hens out
for grain-controlled wine.

Here, Graham converts the noun “iamb” (a two-syllable metrical unit in poetry, with the stress on the second syllable) into a verb. The stanza’s overall effect suggests a surreal dream-state in which words escape from a dictionary’s prison and go on wild adventures. This fits with the final sentence of Kenter’s Statement: “This is a book configured in the pulse and shifts of the Moon, our everywhere night companion and soldier of eclipse.” Reflective, solitary, a serene globe of silver rock, the moon has long inspired poets and dreamers.

During the Celtic festival of Samhain, it’s believed that the veil between the living and dead is at its thinnest. Much of this collection feels as though it was written (or painted) on that veil.

“We’re ghosts on our way / out of this world,” Graham writes in “Haunt.” The next poem ends with “My loss won’t haunt your shadow./ How a poem begins is a taste in the hollow.” One more quotation that sums up the quality of this unusual book: the longer poem “Quarry’s Call” ends with: “Drizzled in awe / I let my cup fill. /Let the abstract sing.”

Finally, Moon Writing is a beautifully designed and printed book. It’s the kind of volume that’s best consumed not in one fell swoop, but in samplings, or as menus put it, pairings of text and image. It would make a fine gift for someone who respects the power of intuition and imagination, and doesn’t mind being puzzled at times by exactly what the message is. It’s more in the music than the lyrics.

About the Author

Catherine Graham is the award-winning author of six collections of poetry, two novels and a hybrid work. She has been published internationally, nominated for a Pushcart Prize, shortlisted for the Montreal International Poetry Prize and her work has appeared in Best Canadian Poetry and on CBC Radio. Her eighth book, Æther: An Out-of-Body Lyric, was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award, Toronto Book Award, and won the Fred Kerner Book Award. Her sixth poetry collection, The Celery Forest, was named a CBC Best Book of the Year. Put Flowers Around Us and Pretend We’re Dead: New and Selected is her ninth book. Forthcoming is a new book of poems on the life and art of Remedios Varo (Wolsak and Wynn/Buckrider Books, 2027). Her website is http://www.catherinegraham.com

Robert Frede Kenter is an award-winning writer and artist and has been published widely for over 30 years in Canada, the U.S., the UK, Australia, Ireland and the Netherlands. Robert’s latest books include IN THE BLUEPRINT OF HER IRIS (with Vikki C.) (Ice Floe Press, 2025), Father Tectonic (Ethel Zine, 2025), and EDEN (Floodlight Ed.). Robert grew up in Hamilton, Ontario (the traditional territories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee and Mississaugas). Robert’s texts and visual art projects have been featured widely in journals, anthologies and web projects, in galleries, in hybrid theatre and multi-media productions & performances and in collaborations with writers around the globe. His cover and book design for Talk Smack to A Hurricane, poems by Lynne Jensen Lampe was a finalist for the da Vinci Eye award from The Eric Hoffler Book Awards, 2023.

About the Reviewer

John Oughton lives in Toronto and has retired as a Professor of Learning and Teaching at Centennial College in Toronto. He is the author of six poetry collections, most recently The Universe and All That (Ekstasis Editions), the mystery novel Death by Triangulation, and over 400 articles, reviews and interviews. John’s studies include an MA in English Literature, where his teachers included Irving Layton, Frank Davey, Eli Mandel and Miriam Waddington, and non-credit courses at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, where he worked with Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, William Burroughs and Robert Duncan. John is a long-time member of the Long Dash Poetry Group. He is also a photographer and guitar player. https://joughton.wixsite.com/author

Book Details

• Moon Writing, by Catherine Graham and Robert Frede Kenter.

• Ice Floe Press, 2026.

• ISBN: 978-895637-28-1