Kate Rogers

Foreign Skin Kate Rogers

"What does it mean to come to know a place when you are a foreigner - transformed and transforming - watching the birds, climbing the mountains, dreaming in whole-wheat phrases taken from the language of home? The idea of China (or at least a portion of China) comes into focus in these fine poems by Kate Rogers whose lamentation 'I must not capture/ the spirit of this place' becomes something of a love story wherein 'a new Alice for Asia' might also imagine herself as 'a girl/ in a flower boat' or a concubine who might 'step away ... to meet the blackbird's song'. Foreign Skin takes the reader along as a privileged companion on a journey worth taking." - John B. Lee