A Review of Robert Frede Kenter's Father Tectonic ( Ethel Zine Press, 2025) – By Vikki C.

I was honoured to be an early reader and also provide an endorsement for Robert Frede Kenter's Father Tectonic, a powerful and expansive collection on domestic love and disorder set against the cultural fabric and tensions of late 20th- early 21st century Western society. A beautiful chapbook, hand-sewn and designed by Sara Lefsyk of Ethel Zine Press, with stunning cover art by Robert himself.

Incisive, brave and deeply personal, the poems in Father Tectonic are like contrapuntal music in a volatile familial terrain – sometimes harmonic, often dissonant – giving voice and immediacy to memory itself through dynamics within the domestic nucleus.

Exploring the impact of a father diagnosed with mental illness and drug dependency, Kenter’s unflinching poetics re-envision an individual’s life of excess and decline as it plays out against the zeitgeist of late 20th- early 21st century Western culture. Visionary in its appeal, the work deconstructs tensions of domestic love and violence, drawing acute parallels with wider social issues and disorder within controlling patriarchal systems. In this regard, the collection is microcosmic, speaking not only to the breakdown of one figure, but the collective dialogue of justice and peace across global communities.

Precinct in spirit and form, these verses ultimately allude that the psyche, much like poetry, is irrational, fragmented and highly paradoxical. Here, Kenter’s landscape is one governed by its own extreme laws, a premise which challenges and reconciles personal perceptions with pressing societal concerns. The result is a potent and expansive vernacular of its own. Intimate, resonant and urgent, Father Tectonic reverberates with beauty and loss, acknowledging the complexities of the human ego, whilst signalling a larger plea for profound and radical change.

Father Tectonic is available from Ethel Zine Press with the added option of a limited edition broadside.