Laura K. McRae is a teacher in Toronto, Ontario where she lives and writes. She grew up in Los Angeles, California and Houston, Texas, attending Rice University for her undergraduate degree in English, but Toronto is her home.
Her poems have appeared in The Antigonish Review, PIF, Northwind, Room, Boston Literary Magazine, Emerge Literary Journal, Contemporary Verse 2, Clementine Poetry Journal, Blast Furnace, Allegro Poetry Magazine, Tar River Poetry, Grain Magazine, Sugared Water and The Fiddlehead. Her chapbook, Distributaries was published in 2016 by Frog Hollow Press.
Her first full-length collection, Were There Gazelle, is forthcoming from Pedlar Press in Spring 2020
Distributaries
Poetry chapbook by Laura McRae
“Laura McRae's debut chapbook is an ambitious long poem that distributes a wide range of film, visual art, and literary references across a personal and public narrative that relies upon water for order, just as humans history has done. Obviously impressive at the level of structure and endurance, the key recommendation we make about this text is its scoured, careful language: McRae's precision, brevity, and magpie eye make this a quite unusual debut, one that makes each word earn its keep.”
“Though Distributaries starts with a defined moment in the speaker’s life, it resists a straightforward narrative. Instead it represents an almost dreamlike state, where the speaker passes from one reflection to another, connecting memories to images to literary and artistic references—from The Italian Job to Georgia O’Keeffe to Van Gogh to John Travolta. Similarly, the speaker alludes to travels in locations as varied as China, Oregon, Scotland, and the Mediterranean, each place evoked only briefly, fleetingly, in a process that resembles free association. […]
Distributaries can be seen as imitating memory itself in the way it highlights at once the immediacy and the transience of lived experience, and in the way that it suggests the parts of our memories that remain obscured, just slightly out of reach.”
Review by Annick MacAskill - the Town Crier
Photo by Jeff Kirby – knife | fork | book
Were There Gazelle
Laura’s first length poetry collection will be coming from Pedlar Press in Spring 2020.
Publication list
Poetry Publications for Laura K. McRae
Distributaries (Chapbook) Frog Hollow Press, 2016
Were There Gazelle (Book) Pedlar Press, Spring 2020 (forthcoming)
Canadian Publications
“Down the Rabbit Hole” Antigonish Review 161, Spring 2010
“Into the Bayou” Room Magazine 34.2
“The Hunt” Contemporary Verse 2, 35.2, Fall 2012
“Purgatory” Contemporary Verse 2, 35.2, Fall 2012
“Morning at the Summer Palace, Beijing” Fiddlehead
“Ring of Brodgar, Orkney” Fiddlehead
“I See China” Grain Magazine
“Morning in the Black Church, Morning in Brasov” Grain Magazine
US Publications
“A Languid Passing” Pif Magazine, June 2011
“First Memory” Northwind, Winter 2012, Issue 1
“Moving In/Moving On” Northwind, Winter 2012, Issue 1
“Specificity Not Required” Northwind, Summer 2012, Issue 3
“take issue with the storyteller” Northwind, Summer 2012, Issue 3
“Evening in Lafayette” Emerge Literary Magazine, October 2012
“Last Days” Boston Literary Magazine, Fall 2012
“American Made” Boston Literary Magazine, Fall 2012
“Fish, Gutted” Tar River Poetry, Spring 2013
“Atchafalaya Basin” Blast Furnace, Vol 5. Issue 3 October 2015
“How to Know When the Dead are Dead” Blast Furnace, Vol 5. Issue 3 October 2015
“The Sun Casts No Shade” Blast Furnace, Vol 5. Issue 3 October 2015
“Twilight in New Orleans” Clementine Poetry Journal, November 2015
“The Visit” Allegro Poetry, Issue 8 March 2016
“I Listen to Istanbul” Sugared Water