Podcast Summary: New Books Network – Natasha Ramoutar, "Baby Cerberus" (Buckrider Books, 2024)
Date: February 15, 2025
Host: Holly Gattery
Guest: Natasha Ramoutar, Poet

Episode Theme Overview

This episode features an insightful conversation with Natasha Ramoutar about her second poetry collection, Baby Cerberus. The discussion delves into the interplay of nostalgia, pop culture, mythology, and the weight of heavy themes like love, loss, racism, and colonization. Through her poems, Ramoutar weaves the ephemeral and the enduring, centering joy and kinship while reflecting on what connects and tethers us as individuals and communities. The episode emphasizes the craft of writing sentimentally and authentically, exploring time, memory, form, and the tender complexities of caring and loss.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Artifacts as Portals to Timeless Love

[03:38-05:49]

• Holly opens by asking Natasha about using "artifact" (e.g., Tamagotchi) as a lens to examine the enduring qualities of love versus our fleeting relationships with trends.
• Natasha explains her fascination with obsolescence in pop culture and how objects with expiration dates—like Tamagotchis—can become timeless through memory and emotion.
  • "What happens to those things we leave behind? ...Tamagotchi is this sort of relic that gives you this insight and this moment into the speaker and the subject and their relationship." – Natasha Ramoutar [03:59]
  • She views such objects as both disposable and eternal, serving as nostalgic conduits.

2. Poetry’s Unique Relationship With Time and Memory

[06:24-08:42]

• Holly remarks on poetry's unparalleled ability to explore time and memory and asks Natasha about the role of pop culture in these explorations.
• Natasha discusses the cyclical nature of trends and pop culture as both a lens to the past and a predictor of the future.
  • "With poetry I feel like there’s more space to play in the idea that time can be cyclical or anachronistic, that you can kind of exist in a moment and outside of it." – Natasha Ramoutar [08:26]
• She contrasts this with fiction’s linear storytelling, celebrating poetry's flexibility.

3. Writing (and Editing) the Sentimental Without Cliché

[09:10-12:39]

• The discussion turns to sentimentality: how to write feeling-rich poetry that is authentic rather than clichéd.
• Natasha talks about her experience working with editor Paul Vermeersch, emphasizing specificity and unique perspective over familiar tropes.
  • "The more specific and in touch with yourself and your speakers of the poems that you can get, I think that’s where you can kind of do away with the sort of cliched phrasing that it's easy to fall into." – Natasha Ramoutar [12:04]
• Editing became a process of digging deeper and making sentiment individual and true rather than generalized or overdone.

4. Live Reading: The Title Poem "Baby Cerberus"

[13:34-16:06]

• Natasha reads "Baby Cerberus," the poignant title poem, about the grief of losing a beloved pet fused with myth and memory.
  • "The first line of my eulogy is this. I would cross the river Styx for you. I would. I honestly would." – Natasha Ramoutar [15:44]
  • The hosts and Natasha discuss the editorial decision to include the line "I would. I honestly would," adding intimacy and youthfulness to the poem’s conclusion.

5. The Craft of Form, Rhythm, and Marrying Content to Structure

[17:28-21:40]

• Holly admires Natasha’s inventive use of poetic form—how poems visually and acoustically embody their meaning.
• Natasha explains she often starts with rhythm or an image, then considers how line breaks, pacing, and even erratic structures reflect the content emotionally and physically.
  • "It often comes from the marrying of the content and the form and what sort of, like, emotional affect in the body I want my readers to have..." – Natasha Ramoutar [21:16]
• She details, as an example, her poem “Rats Don’t Run The City, We Do,” where increasing line tension mirrors the feeling of urban compression.

6. Memorable Quotes & Moments

• Holly’s reflection on sentimentality and cliche:
  "What I’m perceiving as sentimentality in a negative sense is often just people relying on old cliches. It’s not me being opposed to sentimentality, it’s being opposed to lazy writing." – Holly Gattery [12:45]
• Poetic reading and the emotional resonance of the conclusion in "Baby Cerberus."
• Natasha on poetry as mantra:
  "There are certain poems... that are just really relaxing and melodic and almost like a mantra to read out loud." – Co-host [22:36]

Notable Quotes With Timestamps

• "What happens to those things we leave behind? ...Tamagotchi is this sort of relic that gives you this insight and this moment into the speaker and the subject and their relationship."
  — Natasha Ramoutar [03:59]
• "With poetry I feel like there’s more space to play in the idea that time can be cyclical or anachronistic, that you can kind of exist in a moment and outside of it."
  — Natasha Ramoutar [08:26]
• "The more specific and in touch with yourself and your speakers... you can kind of do away with the sort of cliched phrasing that it's easy to fall into."
  — Natasha Ramoutar [12:04]
• "The first line of my eulogy is this. I would cross the river Styx for you. I would. I honestly would."
  — Natasha Ramoutar (from "Baby Cerberus" poem) [15:44]
• "It often comes from the marrying of the content and the form and what sort of, like, emotional affect in the body I want my readers to have..."
  — Natasha Ramoutar [21:16]
• "What I’m perceiving as sentimentality in a negative sense is often just people relying on old cliches... it’s being opposed to lazy writing."
  — Holly Gattery [12:45]

Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:34] — Episode and guest introduction
• [03:38] — Artifacts, love, and nostalgia in poetry
• [06:24] — Time, memory, and pop culture’s cyclical nature
• [09:10] — Writing sentimentally yet avoiding cliché
• [13:34] — Reading of "Baby Cerberus" (title poem)
• [16:06] — Poem editing stories and youthful voice in poetry
• [17:28] — Form, rhythm, and structure in poetry
• [22:36] — Poetry as mantra and emotional re-reading
• [23:34] — Closing thanks and book recommendation

Overall Tone & Takeaways

The episode is intimate and intellectually engaging, with both host and poet maintaining a conversational, collaborative spirit. Natasha Ramoutar openly discusses the vulnerability, risk, and revision embedded in her creative process, while Holly allows the conversation to remain both analytical and affective. The interplay between childhood artifacts, myth, and the emotional undercurrents of time and loss positions Baby Cerberus as a collection balancing deep feeling with experimentation—never shying away from play or profundity.

Recommended for:

• Poetry lovers interested in process and craft
• Readers who resonate with pop culture’s place in literature
• Anyone seeking to understand how nostalgia and sentimentality can be reimagined in contemporary poetry