WINDOWBOXING
Kirsten
Kaschock. Bloof Books, $8 Hand-sewn chapbook 7x7 inches (44p)
On the morning walk to drop him
off at school, my son and I play twenty questions. He likes it best to think of
a person and I have to guess. Is it a man? Is it a historical figure? (Only
characters he knows from Horrible Histories, Doctor Who and Star Wars are
allowed) Is it a king? Is it an English King? Was he a Stuart? Did he get his
head chopped off? It's Charles I.
Kirsten Kaschock's combative new
collection of prose poems, Windowboxing, takes aim at the presumptions
of those who may play twenty questions, ask 'Is it a woman?', and feel that
they have enough information when the answer is 'yes'. Through a series of
experimental poems, austere as manifestos, Kaschock celebrates women who define
themselves variously, and refuse to be domesticated through gender labels and
stereotypes.
Windowboxing's primary concern is
that such lazy thinking inevitably leads to a restrictive domesticity. The
author argues that 'a box is the best shape with which to contort the soul.'
Kashock's ability to reach beyond stereotypes is embedded into the design and
structure of the book. If you judge a book by its cover, then Windowboxing
belongs to minimalism with its white cover and black squares and simple elegant
fonts. However, this impression is deflated by the strategic planting of
illustrations throughout the collection which were drawn by one of the author's
children. What might be a whimsical indulgance in other hands becomes a way of
holding an important tension between the theoretical artistic disciplines of an
experienced and highly trained writer and dancer and the lived experience of
motherhood and family life.
While Windowboxing is the
rigourous work of a serious author, that does not mean that the poems are
lacking in fun. Kaschock is in possession of a very dry sense of humour that
manifests in a love of high class wordplay. She is clearly fond of the
surprises, word bombs going off, that can be found through connecting unrelated
imagery, like 60s miniskirts and Volvos.
Windowboxing charts a course
towards a sense of identity and concern for gender issues that doesn't allow
itself to be reduced to transparencies or flat reductions of personality. Kaschock
has produced a striking work that's both dry and vibrant, earthed in theory and
live in the practice of living. (December 2013)
Purchase Windowboxing HERE.
Reviewer Bio: Simon Travers
published his first collection of poems, entitled 'Anatomy', in November 2013.
It is available from http://stackhousejones.com/anatomy/
