Hunde/fräulein: Dog/nanny. For five and a half years (1995-2001) Kathy Mac lived in Sambro Head, NS, looking after anywhere from four to twelve English Setters. The post entailed maintaining the ocean-side doghouse and looking after the many, varied houseguests of the hundemutter – ocean activist Elisabeth Mann Borgese, youngest daughter of Thomas Mann. These poems take their tone from the days and dogs that inspired them – by turns extravagant, intense, celebratory, wistful.

Kathy Mac has published two books of poems: The Hundefräulein Papers (2009) about the years she spent as the dogsitter of Elisabeth Mann Borgese, and Nail Builders Plan for Strength and Growth (2002) which won the Gerald Lampert Award and was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award. As Kathleen McConnell, she’s also published the analytico-poetic book of essays Pain, Porn and Complicity: Women Heroes from Pygmalion to Twilight (2012). Despite a typically wander-filled early-writer’s life, she’s mostly settled in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, where she teaches creative writing and literature at St. Thomas University.

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