“... a miraculous book that is a poetic, political and affective constellation that recalibrates how a poem might work today as a representation of a moment that is both precarious and self-assured, contradictory and confident..” – Jeff Derksen

"The title piece, by contrast, juxtaposes letters to Marcel Proust with ''tempered fragment'—individual poems with jags and glitches that represent 'shaky transitory moments external to capital’s seemingly omnipotent pulse.' While these poems inevitably engage the Proustian theme of memory’s precariousness, they work hardest to advocate for the 'unprofitable' and 'unproductive' work of domestic life—'the weight women carry daily.'– Canadian Literature

"One may be compelled by ‘Corked ‘ toward non-meanings, but not toward whatever-meanings. Meaning in this work results from an accumulation: of repititions, of contradictions, contraints, and intrusions, as in Proust. But there is no ambiguity."
– Capilano Review

"One may be compelled by Corked toward non-meanings, but not toward whatever-meanings. Meaning in this work results from an accumulation: of repititions, of contradictions, contraints, and intrusions, as in Proust. But there is no ambiguity."
– Capilano Review

“In Corked, Catriona Strang has written a miraculous book that is a poetic, political and affective Ingram CoreSource that recalibrates how a poem might work today as a representation of a moment that is both precarious and self-assured, contradictory and confident. Yet, along with its consideration of this ‘immobilized’ present, there is a compelling historical depth to this book built through an address to Marcel Proust. Strang uses the engagement with Proust as a ‘coincidental hook’ to make a powerful poetic report on ‘the current situation’ by looping it through other historical contexts. Strang lays out, carefully weighed syllable by radiant word, a terrain in which gendered and unpaid labour, resource extraction, off-shoring, and the calculation of value are counted and countered with recurrent struggles. From her early work, TEM and Low Fancy, through her collaboration with the late Nancy Shaw, with Corked Strang solidifies a unique position in Canadian poetry.” – Jeff Derksen

“In Catriona Strang’s poetry, the domestic sphere is comfortably private (spherically shaped) only because a globalized technological continuum of warfare and manufacture makes it so. Corked multiplies such contradictions. First-person pronouns are plural to their rhetorical core. Memory’s a possession to be rid of. Captain Picard, you and your Château Picard are put on notice: To explore the continuum, Corked turns domestic space into a foreign planetary body, and language into a Curiosity rover. Corked touches down through vast internal distances to find a spring of our condition – as seen from here, ‘the Strang terrain’ – in Marcel Proust. The super-fine instrumentation of these poems sends back big data on the intonational and rhythmical contours of intimacy undertaking to live in a continuous (relentless) present tense. Live it.”
– Louis Cabri