Full Description
In Pretenders, her third book of poetry, Kate Potts asks: what is it like, as a daily, lived experience, to feel like a fraud or a fake? And what can 'the imposter phenomenon' - a sense that our true abilities and achievements, and other core aspects of our identities, are unreal, undeserved or mistakenly bestowed - tell us about who we are and how we relate to one another?
Through lively and vivid poetic monologues drawn from original interview material, and through original poetry, Pretenders begins to consider individual feelings and experiences of fraudulence, pretence and persona in a wider social and historical context. The varied, hesitant, questing voices build to create a bold and innovative chorus. Pretenders shines a light on our value systems and hierarchies, interrogating notions of 'realness', self-assurance, and the self. Kate Potts' Whichever Music was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice in 2008 and shortlisted for a Michael Marks Award. Her first book-length collection, Pure Hustle, was published by Bloodaxe in 2011, and followed by Feral, a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.
Contents
9 Introduction: Among the Pretenders
14 The Real Bird
17 Dwellings: voices
33 A Telephone Conversation with My Sister/Footnotes
37 Imposters (1). Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia (Anna Anderson/ Franziska Schanzkowska)
38 Dwellings
41 Work, Work, Work: voices
71 Coping with Redundancy
73 Imposters (2). James Gray (Hannah Snell)
75 Imposters (3). Anna Delvey (Anna Sorokin)
77 Shipwreck/ The Iron Lady
79 Bodies/Care: voices
95 Imposters (4). Princess Caraboo (Mary Willcocks)
97 Bloom
98 Conception
99 Rites/Resolutions: voices
120 Past Tense
122 Lullaby no. 3
123 After Pretence
127 Notes
