Cutting Room

Cutting Room both describes and pushes against the anxious hum of the technologically saturated present. Sarah Pinder's poems navigate domestic and "natural" spaces as landscapes charged with possible violence and desire while they scan scenes as an outsider or camera eye to unsettle and fray familiar settings. Using hyper-focus and the long gaze, they draw the eye to the corners and seams of these spaces, slowing us down, shifting our focus to worn detail, asking us to seek pattern and possibility in a hyper-paced present tense. These are little ominous films, documenting the minutiae around us that can be our undoing.

Let their ribs stretch out – there is no figure
which is not also a ground in

its arctic plane. Cutting rooms as luck
would have it have academic sincerity.


Sarah Pinder was born in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, and lives in Toronto, Ontario. This is her first collection.