Reviews of Titch:

In Titch, Kate Marshall Flaherty reaches the high point so far in her unique poetic career of travelling deeper into the world and into eternity through each grain of sand she encounters. In agile verse that truly is a “walking to arrive at rhythm’s beginning”, she meets with many a salmon, canoe, promise, rock, axe, erotic conversation, disabling seizure, blueberry, birdhouse, snowy day, soft-boiled egg, and session of ecstatic star-gazing. Her verse loves the small that is great. In this book, she turns especially to the titch, the little that remains: “I sniff the rot and sweet / of May’s decay and promise”. The poet of Titch is one of those who can truly look on things—even scarred things—and say, with enchantment, “Your beauty is worthy / of love-making”.         — A. F. Moritz  

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The poems in Kate Marshall Flaherty’s sixth collection, Titch, abide between sacred light and enduring beauty—scarred, whole and restored. These are poems that face the world—its natural wonders and human challenges, with strength and reverence; that openly welcome a reader in, and never forget to breathe. The title of the collection, an informal British word meaning ‘small’—and printed in large uppercase letters on the cover—captures the wide wrap of Flaherty’s poetic embrace.

Fifty-nine conscientiously composed poems, including links to seven video versions. Six of these are beautifully produced in collaboration with her son Gabriel and composer/filmmaker Mark Korven; the seventh is a glorious evocation, by filmmaker Lori H. Ersolmaz, of the ethereal piece “Practicing Like Water” whose lines shimmer with beatific élan: “Have we been floating with angels? / Practicing for death, / in sleep? / Are we slipping into a pool / where dreamer and dream are one? / Are we each a cup of water / poured into the sea?”

The collection is arranged in seven sections—the title of each drawn from a piece that highlights a key thematic concern. “gills wide for breath”—the title of the first section—is drawn from the poem “salmon,” in which Flaherty writes herself into the river-skin of the fish and announces her inborn determination to prevail in the difficult upstream swim of life; “i can do this,” she announces—kin to the fish.

The title of section two, “the spin came to a stop,” is drawn from the poem “Being Unmade,” which tells of a time Flaherty’s “dad rented Paddle to the Sea / on an old metal projector wheel for [her] basement birthday for the whole class.” It was when her

father “played the film backwards, / in a strange slow language, / like marbles in the mouth … that the clapping was real / and the final celluloid strip circle- / snapped.” The poems in this section address the end of things, “impermanence,” “the salt content of tears,” and “suffering”— in Flaherty’s characteristic mode of wistful, plainspoken steadfastness.

Section three, “habitat” contains sixteen pieces that center lovingly on family: brother, daughter Annie, mother, sons Gabriel and Locky. Here the voice is urgent, immediate, protective, always loving: “… stand up for yourself … Show some backbone”; “there is a place of safety”; “I know healing can come after trauma.”

The fourth section, “conquering softened,” looks to the “boneyard” and the resilience of the body and says, “I see the axe in acceptance … Resentment is like drinking hemlock … I can be flexible … Let’s remember the oak and cypress. / Standing side by side … they both make equal shade.”

Section five, “something lighter about to lift off,” comprises ten poems that speak to things that are “hovering,” “thin[ning],” “letting go,” “readying for liftoff.” Like the “Cowbird,” clouds, “Dad’s baseball cap,” “a great blue heron,” music, “The Dead.”  — Elana Wolff  

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This week, my copy of Kate Marshall Flaherty’s new book  TITCH  (Piquant Press) arrived, a thought-provoking and enjoyable read indeed. What an intriguing surprise at the bottom of certain poems to find printed a URL to their audio-visual recreations online.
Sitting down at the computer, I was glad to have read the poems beforehand when my focus was solely on the words themselves and the images their own power inspired. What impact, I wondered, would a video narrated by Flaherty have on those images? How would combinations of words, voice, music, pictures, and even aspects of dance interplay?
I was not disappointed. For instance, in “Canoe” the serene music and filmed scenery of northern lake and shore easily enlarged my original vision of an actual landscape, with Flaherty’s gentle voice backgrounded more as a guiding echo. In “Rose Quartz”, the poet’s persona was foregrounded as she moved through and reflected on the ancient rock surrounding her. “Jack Pine” incorporated two more arts: the Group of Seven Tom Thomson painting formed a backdrop, before which an Indigenous dancer interpreted Flaherty’s words as gestures. “Practicing Like Water” was also different, combining abstract images, music, and questions not as literal mirrors of the physical, but as evocations of the state of half-waking. Each multifold experience was unique and in marked contrast to the singular directness of a live poetry reading onstage.
On Flaherty’s web page there is much more to enjoy but also to think about. What is the potential for other elements from art forms to be mixed and balanced with words to create an even larger poetry? — Susan Ioannou  

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Kate Marshall Flaherty’s poems —many of them inspired by a reverence for nature — are charged with imaginative gusto. The reader comes upon lines like these and marvels:

In-between time,

when purple-pink primulas

hermit themselves, genuflect

beneath snow-tamped earth.

Poems such as the emotionally charged “Axe,” and “Cap” — a moving tribute to the poet’s father — make this a notable collection.  — Kenneth Sherman

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Poet Kate Marshall Flaherty’s latest collection, Titch, resonates with the themes and stylistic excellence seen in her previous work. Most of the poems in the book are upbeat and some are joyous. Its tone is reflective, and its imagery is precise and evocative.
The collection’s title Titch – which means a small somebody – is a clever take on the moniker for Little Tich, a famous music hall performer from the turn of the twentieth Century, and a word derived from Australian and British slang. Flaherty’s poems inspire and entertain, however down-to-earth the poet’s subject matter.
The poem, Just a Titch, explains this perspective in tangible, intimate images – “the inch of wine left in the bottle … the amount of chili flakes needed for heat … and when I dip into the credit line, charge extra on the card, skim a bit from bills for treats.” By focusing on the basics and life’s minutiae, the poet uses the small to evoke the big picture. Seen through the author’s magnified lens, even small observations become profound.
Many of the poems show Flaherty’s strong bonds to her family. In Aubade, Flaherty depicts the simple warmth evoked by the scent of her mother’s cup of morning coffee, made “earlier than sun most mornings” by a woman “in the kitchen in her chenille bathrobe.” The poem reflects a daughter’s sweet nostalgia for childhood days when she’d stay home from school with her mother drinking café au lait, “just for today.”
Cap is a moving tribute to the poet’s father that mixes a wealth of small, specific and tender details. “Back to his babies he goes, the peapods and the carrot nubbins, ‘til the lunch he makes for her at one.” Equally tender is Commiserating with Cows, a reflection on timeless connection that wraps up with one of her mother’s down-to-earth truisms, “you know rain is on the way when the cows lie down.”
The imagery in the poem Sel is simple and passionate. “I learned the salt content of tears is the same as blood and the sea—” The book also spotlights the author’s reverence for nature, expressed in the poem Promise, about the beauty of a hidden spring and nature’s enduring cycles of rebirth. “Snap a piece of frozen bulrush and you will see a bit of fluff, sinew stalk but also glistening moisture — a sign.… this sap in stalk, this nest in soggy snow, the unseen ring around the cuticle moon – Nature is leaving traces.”
A few poems express social commentary, including and the danger ended— an allegorical poem inspired by pandemic fears, “in the spine-hair of fear that we might be caught, be tagged, be the next IT and some of us grabbed a youngster by the hand to stuff them safe in a leaf pile.” The strikingly descriptive poem Sword Dance explodes with sentiment over the moves of a dancer who reminds the author of a beloved child. — Robin Harvey

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