Jade Rosina McCutcheon

Review of SMALL FEATHER

 TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2021 | STATESMAN JOURNAL
TUESDAY EVENING SEPTEMBER 7, 2021
Poetry: Jade Rosina McCutcheon is still here. John Van Dreal Special to Salem Statesman Journal, USA TODAY NETWORK.

The cover of the chapbook immediately caught my eye. Within a kaleidoscope of doodled line and color, a thought bubble speaking for the soul of the work declares,“I AM Still here.” Within a few hours, I was at the book’s end, where the last poem, “Into Green, ”sings: “into the stream, out of a dream / she answered: ‘here I am’.”
“Small Feather” begins with a joyous birth of energy in “Australian Bush Solstice” as Jade Rosina McCutcheon
introduces the grandeur of an evening in her homeland: “Our revelry bounces off full moon light /flashes between stampeding clouds / as a summer
storm excites the air / crackling the blue-green gums.”
From there, the poet ambles through splendidly descriptive words, doodle drawings, and atmospheric
black-and-white photos, to the last page, where she concludes: “A journey ended, yet begun / a spider’s
web is still being spun / around, within, the frog still sings / inside the forest green, there spins ……. / a
dream.” Surrounded by the textures, smells, and tastes of the Governor’s Cup coffee house, McCutcheon and I
chatted about her life and work. Her accent and diction are delightful distractions, making almost everything
she says both lyrical and engaging. She sees herself as just one person — “a small feather in a collective” —
but also a witness, awake and observing. McCutcheon is academically accomplished, with two doctoral degrees and books on performance and consciousness. “SMALL FEATHER” is her first chapbook of poetry.
A resident of Australia until
she relocated to the U.S. 20 years
ago, she spends her days moongazing,
writing, drawing, playing music, and engaging in numerous constructive activities, including social work, feminist studies, and supporting survivors of abuse.
Her work is deeply fused to her
connections with people, the land, and the cosmos. The Australian terrain and its people spoke to her, spiritually
and aesthetically, but when she moved to the States, she lost touch with those sources of inspiration. It took journeys to California’s Mt. Shasta and the
Dorland Mountain Arts Community, Salem’s Minto Brown Island Park, and the Oregon coast, combined
with her volunteer crisis work, to find the audible frequency of the American experience that now inspires
her craft.
In her poem “Turquoise,” she writes:
Sun deep carmine
falls into dusty
orange light
sweet cumin
smells dance
spilling upon
all the life
in that house
coming together
deep inside
the violet scented
turquoise
heart.
I may or may not have mentioned to her that those words might be fun to experience with a microdose of
psilocybin, but she certainly did tell me her intention in writing the passage was to create something “fabulously
imaginative and descriptive.”
Her poems range from surreal and dreamy to the metaphysical, then to intensely insightful and boldly,
but beautifully, tragic. In “After,” she writes of finding a dead sparrow:
I am weeping outside,
under the stars
as though
the bird
were you
small feather
on the hardwood
floor
a sudden gust
and you’re
gone.

McCutcheon may see herself as a small feather, but her poetic voice is a grand plumage.

John Van Dreal is a member of the Mid-Valley Poetry
Society, which furnishes this monthly column on Oregon
poets and their works. He can be reached at john
vandreal@gmail.com.