Synopsis "Portrait"
Gillian Lynn Katz’s evocative collection of poetry includes over twenty poems about her experiences growing up under Apartheid in South Africa. In her poem “Robben Island” Ms. Katz accounts for her visit to Mandela’s prison cell and writes of Mandela, “he was more prince than prisoner.” She reflects on motherhood in several other poems, and in her poem “Portrait,” the title of this collection, she writes about breaking the cycle of abuse in the next generation. In her prize-winning poem “Midnight” the teenage author writes that she “needed questions answered.” In these poems, Ms. Katz grapples with the trauma of emigration and the difficulties of creating a sense of home in a new country.—Sandy Chapin, lyricist of Cat’s in the Cradle and author of EntriesReading Gillian Lynn Katz’s poetry collection, Portrait, is like walking through two interconnected gardens: one in South Africa, the other in the United States. Ms. Katz’s gardens grew from stories, both heartrending and resplendent in color. Roots that survived Apartheid, and being uprooted to another continent, growing stronger after each storm, becoming poems that speak about injustice and sorrow, as well as introspection, joy, and hope.—Patricia Carragon, author of Innocence and The Cupcake Chronicles curator and editor-in-chief of Brownstone Poets, Brooklyn, NYThe vital center of Portrait, by Gillian Lynn Katz, is the old and new South Africa, a portrait as clear-eyed, sensuous, tough, sorrowful, and ironic as the country’s echoes.Her personal irony becomes literary irony in these lines from the title poem: “The Galleria Mall photographer in White Plains photographed me for the article I wrote: ‘Witness to the Birth and Death of My Country.’”With frequently explosive imagery and language, the poems have tentacles that extend from titles like the epic “Chicken Run” to “Drumbeat Cure for Aids” to “Ode to the Fish Who Nibbled Bin Laden’s Brain,” to poems of private dark and extravagant light. Gillian Katz’s emotional geography is never too far from Johannesburg, even in Scarsdale.—Estha Weiner, author of at the last minute
