Poems for Addiction, Sex & Sanity

Zine Review:

Poems for Addiction, Sex & Sanity

Quirky and corrupt, Sudbury, Ontario-raised, Toronto-based slam poet Kate Leadebeater has a thing or two to say. With subject matter ranging from pop culture critique and c-list (c-list? Why not?) celebrity crushes, to taken-serious addiction to small town nostalgia, back to brash big city sexuality, Leadbeater is a challenge and a joy.

Able to balance brattiness and vulnerability, Leadbeater brings a Canadiana touch to her work, one that she is able to nail without cottage-country boredom. Her sometimes-awkward metaphors are likely a result of the ever-tricky task of translating spoken word to the page, but her humour is so on and the awkwardness so endearing, that it’s hard to find it flawed. She is sentimental, romantic and brutal as she takes on the modern world, young love and madness across generations. I fell in love with “August 11th” and blushed at the bold declarations in “Things We Are Scared Of.”

Clean, believable, (borderline earnest) with an unusual stream-of-consciousness that just gets funnier as it goes on (displayed excellently in the poem “September 5th”)– Kate’s poems make me feel single, miss my mother and consider moving to Montreal. (Tara-Michelle Ziniuk)

Chapbook, Kate Leadebeater, $7, Burning Effigy Press, Toronto, ON, burningeffigy.com