Sarah Pinder

Sarah Pinder is the author of Cutting Room (Coach House Books, 2012) and Common Place (Coach House Books, 2017). Her writing has been shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Awards, and included in magazines like Geist, Arc and Poetry is Dead. She lives in Toronto, Canada.

Cutting Room both describes and pushes against the anxious hum of the technologically saturated present. Sarah Pinder’s poems navigate domestic and ‘natural’ spaces as landscapes charged with possible violence and desire. Using hyper-focus and the long gaze, they draw the eye to the corners and seams of these spaces, slowing us down, shifting our focus to worn detail, asking us to seek pattern and possibility in a hyper-paced present tense. These are little ominous films, documenting the minutiae around us that can be our undoing.

Common Place explores the stories of shifting, resilient bodies and landscapes bound by systems of capital and power. From thin threads of text messages across borders to encounters with strangers in the crush of rush-hour transit, Sarah Pinder names our most private and public moments of seeing and being seen. With considered, quiet urgency, this poem witnesses our ambiguous, aching present and looks toward what comes next.

Visit: www.sarahpinder.com

Sarah Pinder

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“I see poetry as a tool to speak in a new way about experiences that shape our lives, as well as a way to imagine the possibilities of different presents and futures.”

sarah pinder