Interview with Mary Norbert Körte

Open the anthology Women of the Beat Generation to page 256 and read the words of Brother Antoninus, William Everson, who said, "A series of women poets emerged in San Francisco who identified with the establish Beat Poets even as they challenged them on their grounds, including Joanne Kyger and Mary Norbert Körte. Of these, the career of Mary Norbert Körte most sharply defines the historic tension between the women of service and the women of passion. The strongest woman poet to emerge in the west, she became a student of Lew Welch, cracking convention within the bastion of the religious order." Raised in a devout family, joining the convent right out of high school in 1952, and stunned by 2 events in the tumultuous 1960s, Mary Norbert Körte continued to make striking poems deeply connected to the land where she lived in extreme southern Cascadia, in a town called Willets, California, until she passed away in 2022. To hear the original audio from this interview, click here. Check out more of what the Lab does here, and listen to more current and archival podcasts on Spotify or on our website. To get original poetry right in your mailbox this summer, check out the Poetry Postcard Fest.