on Kate Potts

Pretend

Kate Potts’s Pretenders (Bloodaxe) is a systematic exploration of imposter syndrome. Very much a ‘project-book’, and informed by academic reading, Potts considers imposter syndrome through mainstream culture, personal experience, art and, above all, through interviews; the majority of the book is made up of verbatim interview text, structured into free verse. As well as the interview poems, there are poems that explore deliberate pretence through people such as Anna Delvey and the eighteenth-century cross-dressing sailor Hannah Snell. A more personal piece is the excellent ‘A Telephone Conversation with my Sister/Footnotes’. There’s an energising shift in pace and voice between these different types of poems. Potts considers imposter syndrome not only in the workplace, but also across parenting and dating. Reading Pretenders, I had that sense that one has in a successful project book, of looking at complexity through differing angles, like a crystal refracting light. The book comes with a thoughtful introduction and notes.

The interview poems see inside others’ lives and minds, which is a fascinating privilege. They are very personal and honest pieces. Potts asks the questions we want to ask our friends and colleagues but shy away from. In a meta move, Potts then intervenes her own ‘Author’ voice and ‘Publisher’ voice in short prose notes, making transparent her reticence about writing on her own imposter syndrome. I enjoyed the twists and turns of these conversations within conversations. And I found this vulnerability quite moving; Pretenders is a courageous book.

Poetry, with its shifting perspectives and multiple voices, is an ideal form for examining a slippery, poorly ...