Why subscribe?
Because you’re a writer.
You enjoy process notes. Commiserating about rejections, celebrating success. Paid subscribers have additional access to audio selections and exclusive content. Plus, when the book comes out, you’ll get a copy of the book.
Because you have an interest in art pottery, vintage photographs, California history.
Much of my current work involves research and writing toward my book, Clay Bodies: The Brief Lives and Lasting Legacies of Rufus and Bradley Keeler.
Rufus and Bradley were my great-grandfather and grandfather, respectively, and I’ve spent a good deal of my adult life trying to figure out who they were: what they were like, what they liked, what made them successful, who did they love, and what the intergenerational ramifications were of their early deaths.
I’m fascinated by what I’ve found. I hope you will be too.
Why did you change the title of this Substack from Everyone the Same Soup?
Because everything evolves, even a Substack. I wanted something that actually said what this Substack was about. I’m actually a pretty terrible cook so if you came here looking for a soup recipe, I’m afraid you’re out of luck!
About Cati Porter
Hi. I’m a poet, essayist, editor, wife, mother, daughter, and arts administrator based in Inland Southern California, where I live with my family, including my mom, Heather.
My mother’s father was Brad Keeler of Brad Keeler Artwares fame. He died when she was only four years old, and I spent most of my growing up years not knowing who he was, but curious about why we had these giant ceramic lobsters and roosters around the house. One of my most vivid memories is of our weekend housekeeping rituals which involved dusting them with Lemon Pledge and old rag while the television played Soul Train, American Bandstand, and later MTV. (I am a child of the 1980s.)
I write a little bit of everything on topics I want to learn more about, like writing, or my grandfather’s ceramics work or the historic architecture I love, or myself.
My essays often address tough parenting topics. An essay about talking to my sons about rape appears in Salon. One about teen suicide appears in The Manifest-Station. Another about parenting during the pandemic appears in Shark Reef. Did I mention I have two sons? Oh. Yeah, that's been a major source of inspiration for my writing.
My poems go run the gamut from serious to silly. The Body at a Loss address parenting and cancer and family. My Skies of Small Horses is more playful but also decidedly and darkly domestic. The Body, Like Bread, is about hunger and satiation. I've also written about desire personified as Desire, Modigliani's nudes, and words related to fruit.
My latest chapbook of poems, Novel, was published by Bamboo Dart Press in June 2022. It includes poems like "I Will Miss You When I'm Dead" and "Folding Dave."
My latest full-length manuscript, small mammals, was a finalist for the 2021 Wilder Prize from Two Sylvias Press and was published in June 2023 by Mayapple Press. FYI, the mammals are mostly human.
Thank you for reading.
