upside down selfie of katie, a white nonbinary person with curly brown hair and round glasseskatie o’brien is a community researcher and poet living in Kjipuktuk (“Halifax”). they are a white settler originally from St. John’s, Ktaqmkuk (the Mi’kmaw name for the island colonially known as Newfoundland), on the unceded territory of the Beothuk. their fifth chapbook, two ten six, was published by The Blasted Tree in October 2022. they’re happy you’re here.

chapbooks

  • two ten six | The Blasted Tree | 2022
    this is a weird lil collection I created by feeding my first ever poetry manuscript to a zalgo text generator. thank you Kyle for experimenting with me yet again xo
  • micro moonlights | above/ground press | 2021
    chapbook no. 2 from my ongoing Beethoven project! my immensely talented sibling m made the cover art and I am in love with it. lots of love to rob for being such a great publisher and pal.
  • a peal of thunder, a moment of | The Blasted Tree | 2019
    a collection of concrete poetry based on Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, the piece I was listening to the moment my grandmother died. infinite thanks to Kyle Flemmer for loving this project as much as I do.
  • t\here: two-homed tales | Loft on EIGHTH Press | 2017
    an exploration of what it means to exist as both a Calgarian and a Newfoundlander on Treaty 7 land. many thanks especially to Catherine Beaudette, Colette Laliberté, Margaret Ryall, and Lisa Murphy-Lamb.
  • a Little Golden Book of    eating disorders | self-published | 2015
    experimental found poetry based on an online journal I kept in my late teens, documenting my experience with (what I understood at the time to be) binge eating disorder.

read my poetry

pink blobs drawn on a lighter pink background
crop from the joni suites. white music notation layered over black, yellow, and white glitched photographs
poem that reads 'becoming: fading pelvic scars / little more than ghosts in / my skin' over a slightly glitched image of an abdominal scar

other things

  • my grandmother listened to elvis | 2021
    some reflections for periodicities : a journal of poetry and poetics on grief, healing, and my micro moonlights chapbook.
  • #TPQ5 | 2020
    I wrote micro-reviews of five of my favourite poetry books in this blog post for Christopher Margolin’s The Poetry Question.
  • my (small press) writing day | 2019
    rob mclennan asked me to write a piece for his my (small press) writing day project. I wrote about imposter syndrome and weeding.

podcast artwork by Harmeet Rehal featuring an illustration of two fat tattooed hands reaching toward each other. one hand is white with yellow nail polish, and the other is brown with purple nail polish. the podcast title, TRANS FATS, is written between the two hands in a thick typeface in black. there is a sun with small white clouds in the middle of the image, and delicate leafy vines around the title. the image is decorated with light blue forget-me-not flowers, and the background is a purple-to-yellow gradient evoking the nonbinary flag TRANS FATS chews on the question: how is my experience of trans corporeality mediated by pathologising logics? I argue that normative stories violently impact trans folks’ perceiving and witnessing of our own bodies, and that decolonial feminism and disability justice can help us tell more care-full stories. many thanks to my sibling M for audio magic and my pal Harmeet Rehal for the podcast artwork!

thank you

after Chen Chen and in no particular order

to the letter u
to buffy the vampire slayer
to weighty pebbles that fit in my palm
to ruth and felicity and doreen and rosy
to this bird photo of katie and their wife viv's silhouettes during the solar eclipse. they are holding punch cards above their heads to see the eclipe against the pavement.
to old school runescape
to sasha velour and rose petals
to sitting on big rocks
to en dashes
to fog
to new homes and old homes
to queer chosen family (always homes)
to my aborted medical career
to ice crunching under our blundstones
to this video permanently etched into my brain
to the space between the columbaria
to gender euphoria
to french horns
to naps
to u

editing

  • from November 2019 to January 2022, I was the founder and editor of blood orange: an experimental poetry tarot. this project holds a special place in my heart – check it out if you like!
  • many lifetimes ago I also helped to revive NōD, the student lit mag at UCalgary.
katie reading at Amy LeBlanc's chapbook launch, 2018
Group shot at Woolf's Voices 26, 2019; photograph by Meagan Mah
katie holding several back issues of NōD magazine, 2015; photograph by Jason Herring

media

interviews

  • filling Station Issue 80 Sneak Peek | 2023
    so thrilled to chat with Rachel Shabalin for this interview about cursed texts and collaborating with my younger self!
  • TtD supplement #169 | 2020
    many thanks to rob mclennan for this lovely interview about my ongoing Beethoven work.
  • Train : a poetry interview | 2020
    so honoured to be interviewed by D.W. Adams and have the opportunity to talk some more about the concrete poetry I’m creating based on Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata.
  • poetry mini interview | 2020
    Thomas Whyte interviewed me on his fantastic blog, poetry mini interviews. we chatted about tarot, punctuation, and the importance of community.