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LEIGH KOTSILIDIS
PORTFOLIO |
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Some of Us May Live Poetry book, forthcoming 2026 Leigh Kotsilidis’s full-length poetry collection, Some of Us May Live (Coach House Books), a follow-up to her first collection Hypotheticals, ambitiously intends to provoke new mappings of scientific knowledge as it relates to everyday experiences. These poems intervene into prevailing ideas and rhetoric of science through colloquial interrogations and interpretations wherein, apart from using familiar language and representations for understanding the scientific discourse, the text goes beyond human subjects in knowledge-building to include non-human actors, specifically as they relate to the Anthropocene and ecological concerns. At times conflating the reader's existence with wolves, birds, bears, boulders, glaciers, oceans, black holes, Kotsilidis reveals a multitude of shifting perspectives. Boundaries are questioned, redefined, and questioned again, reminding us: “Inside each of us, / more of us // Circling, clinging, / unsure.” “Time is running wild running out,” “You should live as if nothing, or everything, / is a miracle.” Hypotheticals Poetry book, 2011 Hypotheticals (Coach House Books) is a feature-length poetry collection heavily engaged in scientific discourse—the book is arranged into sections, each one referencing a part of the scientific method, while the poems themselves adopt the rhetoric and/or concepts of various scientific theories. Using the poetic form as an intervention to reframe the language and ideas found in scientific discourse and conflate them with everyday situations and speech, I destabilise the reader. This work, as well as my new book Some of Us May Live (forthcoming), ambitiously intend to provoke new mappings of scientific knowledge as it relates to our common experiences to stimulate a dialogue and critique of science and to encourage new ways of thinking about the intersections of different kinds of knowledge with science. Praise for Hypotheticals “There's a beautiful recklessness in the combinations Leigh Kotisilidis imagines, careful invitations in the sounds and shapeliness that let understanding not be reduced or distorted. These poems wrangle with the vocabularies of explanation, pronouncement, commerce, argument and fact, allowing them, more often than not, to self-destruct, so that we can glimpse in the rubble and wreckage and aftershocks something we are not always in a position to remember.” — Dara Wier “‘In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded,’ claims Terry Pratchett in the epigraph to Hypotheticals, Leigh Kotsilidis’s gutsy poetic debut. But in the subsequent poems about origins, anatomy, tennis, meteorology, birds, and violence—among many other subjects—Pratchett’s revisionary précis of Genesis might easily be replaced with something more like ‘Now there is everything, and it’s still exploding.’… Nature is still exploding, still evolving, and yet the riotous orgy of animals, organs, and green matter depicted in Kotsilidis’s pulsating text proceeds against not only a backdrop of the grand narratives of geographic but also the more personal, recognizable narratives of day-to-day life and human drama. ... Hypotheticals is not simply a reaction against the limitations of science, for that would be no accomplishment at all; much more impressively, Kotsilidis’s four-part poetic experiment systematically rejects the easy comforts of an unquestioned and unquestioning belief in science as the answer to all human ails, past and present, attempting instead to find new ways to measure ‘the wattage of loss, decibel / of break, the blathering drain.’” — Graham Jensen, The Bull Calf, Review (2014) “Leigh Kotsilidis’s first collection of poems, Hypotheticals, is a wonderful window into the mind and soul of a poet whose generation, highly educated and steeped in science, is challenging the constructs that have filled the void left by reason’s triumph over faith. ... The poems bring a cold analysis to bear on the world at large, and the descriptions within them will surprise readers much more often than connect with them on the level that Duke Ellington cherished—the thing that is said without saying it. In short, Kotsilidis’s work seems to challenge the precepts of poetry as avidly as it takes on science. Rather than Ellington, she might be compared with Ornette Coleman.” — Rick Mullin, American Scientist, “Querying Science” (2011) “The confusion the reader experiences in the face of these phrases mirrors the questioning at the heart of the collection. How can we know what we mean? We’ve been on the giving and receiving line of empty words. Can they ever clarify the moment that calls for them, or do they forever muck up what we already haven’t been able to see? ... The collection does not determine whether those words have substance or not, and Kotsilidis doesn’t appear concerned with bringing such a resolution. After all, behind our backs, what knowledge was grasped has already had time to “part, relocate, reform.” In its current shape, in this moment with a sated reader’s eye firmly on it, the book is fresh and startling. It is both a challenge and a delight to read. The particular “bang” that skewed these fragments of evidence and conclusions into a collection was a savvy and sharp-eyed one.” — Jesse MacEachern, Lemon Hound, “The Limbless and Resolute" (2012) 
READ AN EXCERPT OF HYPOTHETICALS HERE. FULL REVIEWS: The Bull Calf, Spring 2014 Lemon Hound: Poetry & Poetics/Reviews, September 2012 Literatured.com, July 2012 American Scientist, May 2012 NewPages Book Reviews, February 2012 Carmine Starnino's Top Ten of 2011 Telegraph-Journal, Fall 2011 Rover: Montreal Arts Uncovered, Fall 2011 Montreal Review of Books, Fall 2011 INTERVIEWS: Northern Poetry Review, 2011 rob mclennan's blog: 12 or 20 questions (second series), 2011 OTHER PUBLICATIONS (journals & small press): 2026 Some of Us May Live (forthcoming) 2014 “For Christ’s Sake”, Hazlitt online, Random House of Canada, weekly poem. 2013 Rare Birds (installation excerpts), Apogee Magazine, Spring 2013. 2012 The Best Canadian Poetry In English (Anthology), Tightrope Books. (1 poem) 2012 Flukes of Nature (excerpts), Event Magazine No. 41.2 2011 “By Any Name,” “Before Meteorologists,” “The Tin Woodsman Turns Partisan,” “Rodeo Romance”, The Winnipeg Review, Issue 5, Fall. 2009 “what are we driving ourselves into”, Prairie Fire No. 30:3. 2009 “Supposition No.1”, Prairie Fire No. 30:3. 2009 “Supposition No.2”, Prairie Fire No. 30:3. 2008 I.V. Lounge Nights (An Anthology featuring selected poets from the I.V. Lounge Reading Series), Tightrope Books. (2 poems) 2008 “Diagnoses”, Prism international. No. 47:1 Fall. 2008 “Roadside Hideaway,” Hot Dog: a bestiary. 2009 “Ambitious Birds”, Fevered Spring Almost Instant Anthology, Toronto Small Press Fair Group. 2007 The Hoodoo You Do So Well (Anthology), Littlefishcartpress. (4 poems) 2007 This Grace (Anthology), Littlefishcartpress. (10 poems) 2005 “Artificial Reef”, The Fiddlehead No. 226 Winter. SELECTED READINGS: 2017 Blanc de Blanc (Backyard Sessions), Montreal, Quebec. 2016 Port Credit Library, Mississauga, Ontario. 2016 The Garnet, Peterborough, Ontario. 2015 Café L’Insouciant (Lapalabrava Reading Series), Montreal, Quebec. 2015 Chez Boris (Lawn chair soiree Reading Series), Montreal, Quebec. 2015 Atwater Library (Quebec Writers’ Federation, Rapid-Fire Reading Series), Montreal, Quebec. 2015 Molly’s Coffee House (odd sundays Reading Series), Fredericton, New Brunswick. 2014 University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, New Brunswick. 2014 High Park (The High Park Reading Festival, Toronto, Ontario. 2014 Café Résonance (Résonance Reading Series), Montreal, Quebec. 2014 The Elora Poetry Centre (Fish Quill Poetry Boat Reading Tour), Elora, Ontario. 2014 Atwater Library (The Atwater Poetry Project), Montreal, Quebec. 2013 The Sparrow (LitPop Reading Series #2), Montreal, Quebec. 2013 The Common (The Common Reading Series), Toronto, Ontario. 2013 Tranzac (Fish Quill Poetry Boat Reading Tour), Toronto, Ontario. 2013 Beaver House (Fish Quill Poetry Boat Reading Tour), Elora, Ontario. 2013 Historic Kissing Bridge (Fish Quill Poetry Boat Reading Tour), West Montrose, Ontario. 2013 Words Worth Books (Fish Quill Poetry Boat Reading Tour), Kitchener, Ontario. 2013 Wired Up Pugs Café-Bistro (Fish Quill Poetry Boat Reading Tour), Cambridge, Ontario. 2013 Cedar House (Fish Quill Poetry Boat Reading Tour), Paris, Ontario. 2013 The Station Coffee House & Gallery (Fish Quill Poetry Boat Reading Tour), Brantford, Ontario. 2013 Chiefswood National Historic Site (Fish Quill Poetry Boat Reading Tour), Six Nations of the Grand River Territory, Ontario. 2013 Argo Books, Montreal, Quebec. 2012 The Corner Bookstore (The Best Canadian Poetry Anthology), New York City, USA 2012 Lillian Vernon Creative Writing House (The Best Canadian Poetry Anthology), New York City, USA 2012 York University, Toronto, Ontario. 2012 Revival Bar, 783 College Street (The Best Canadian Poetry Anthology), Toronto, Ontario. 2012 Niagara Artists Centre (Grey Borders Reading Series), St. Catharines, Ontario. 2012 Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario. 2012 Chiefswood National Historic Site (Fish Quill Poetry Boat Reading Tour), Six Nations of the Grand River Territory, Ontario. 2012 The Station Coffee House & Gallery (Fish Quill Poetry Boat Reading Tour), Brantford, Ontario. 2012 Brown Dog Cafe (Fish Quill Poetry Boat Reading Tour), Paris, Ontario. 2012 Wired Up Pugs Café-Bistro (Fish Quill Poetry Boat Reading Tour), Cambridge, Ontario. 2012 Gallery on the Grand (Fish Quill Poetry Boat Reading Tour), Kitchener, Ontario. 2012 Historic Kissing Bridge (Fish Quill Poetry Boat Reading Tour), West Montrose, Ontario. 2012 Elora Farmers Market, Bissell Park (Fish Quill Poetry Boat Reading Tour), Elora, Ontario. 2012 Tranzac (Fish Quill Poetry Boat Reading Tour), Toronto, Ontario. 2012 Casa del Popola (The Golden Hour), Montreal, Quebec. 2012 Placebo Space (The Golden Hour), Toronto, Ontario. 2012 New York Mills Cultural Center, New York Mills, Minnesota, USA 2012 Lawnya Vawnya Festival, St. Johns, NL (more details TBA) 2012 Robson Reading Series, UBC, Vancouver, British Columbia. 2012 Art Bar Poetry Series, Paupers Pub, Toronto, Ontario. 2012 Cobourg Poetry Workshop, Cobourg, Ontario. 2012 Barnhill's Books, North Carolina, USA 2012 High Point University, High Point, North Carolina, USA 2011 Innisfree Poetry Bookstore & Cafe, Boulder, Colorado, USA 2011 Equinox Brewing, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA 2011 Coach House Toronto Fall Launch, The Dance Cave, Toronto, Ontario. 2011 The Artel, Kingston, Ontario. 2011 Montreal Fall Book Mega-Launch,The Sparrow, Montreal, Quebec. 2011 University of New Brunswick's Poetry Weekend, UNB Memorial Hall, Fredericton, New Brunswick. |
