Poet’s Bio

(January 2022)

Kate Rogers’ poetry is forthcoming in SubTerrain. Her work has appeared in Looking Back at Hong Kong (CUHK Press); the Sad Girl Review; The Beauty of Being Elsewhere; Trinity Review (University of Toronto); the Quarantine Review; The Goose (Wilfred Laurier University); Poetry Pause (League of Canadian Poets); Voice & Verse Magazine; Understorey Magazine; World Literature Today; Writing for Peace and Many Mountains Moving, among other publications. Kate’s essay “The Accident,” appeared in the Spring 2021 Windsor Review.

Kate’s reviews have appeared in Arc Poetry Magazine, Prism International; Cha: An Asian Literary Journal and Verse Afire. Kate volunteers for Art Bar, Toronto’s oldest poetry series and is a member of the League of Canadian Poets. Kate re-patriated to Canada in late 2019 after teaching tertiary level language-through-literature and related courses in Hong Kong for two decades.

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Kate Rogers’ latest book, Out of Place expresses her life in the liminal zone between countries, cultures and identities. Kate repatriated to Canada in December 2019 after spending one third of her life in Asia. The poems in Out of Place express being of a place, yet never belonging; they explore longing and transformation. In her review of Kate’s book, Toronto poet Lisa Richter elaborates:

“Place is a difficult subject to write about. With more obscure or esoteric subjects, poets can maintain a safe emotional distance, thereby avoiding the vulnerability that is both prerequisite to and the by-product of writing about our most intimate experiences. Writing about place demands a reckoning with the familiar, the examination of one’s own identity, and this forces us to confront our ghosts and demons, see ourselves reflected in convex mirrors. The objects we perceive through the lens of our experiences are both closer and farther than they appear. Place is so embedded in our sense of self, it becomes intrinsic to the lens through which we perceive the world.”

(Link to the full review: https://poets.ca/2018/02/21/review-out-of-place-by-kate-rogers/)

Kate’s poetry has appeared in literary journals and anthologies based in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Canada, the U.S. and U.K. During her more than two decades in Asia, Kate was inspired to write about the impact of colonialism and the destruction of the natural environment. Her protest poetry expresses Kate’s commitment to the Hong Kong fight for democracy and her commitment to social justice in whichever country she calls “home”.

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Notable:

Kate Rogers’ poem, “Black Cloud” after Carlos Amorales, won Honourable Mention in the Power Plant Gallery/Toronto International Festival of Authors ekphrastic poetry contest in May 2020.

Kate’s work has appeared in Poetry I I Pause from the League of Canadian Poets (March 2020), and Voice & Verse Issue 51: Emergency (Hong Kong, January 2020). Publication highlights from 2019 include Understorey Magazine (Nova Scotia); World Literature Today (U.S.); Algebra of Owls (U.K.) and Cha: An Asian Literary Journal (Hong Kong).

Kate’s poem “John and the Book of Kells” won first prize in the Trinity College, Dublin Book of Kells Competition (November 2019). Her poem “The Giraffe-bone Knife Set” was short-listed for the ROOM 2019 Poetry Contest (British Columbia).

Her work has also appeared in the 2017 Montreal International Poetry Prize Anthology, Sharon Berg’s online journal, Big Pond Rumors (Ontario), The Twin Cities Cinema Anthology (Singapore-Hong Kong), The Guardian (UK), and the Asia Literary Review (UK), among other publications.

Out of Place is Kate’s latest collection, published by Aeolus House (Quattro Books), Toronto, 2017.