The language, rather than poetic, is often from storytelling, or like the script of a play or movie: ‘Are you there, sweetheart? Do you know me?’ Yet when it’s all jammed together, it has this end effect of rather good poetry: visual, emotive, inconclusive. I like the juxtaposition of high drama and emotion with mundane details, often of food: a tuna fish sandwich, a bowl of soup. I caught myself at first not sure what was happening, and not sure I was liking it, but to risk so many poems with unreliable narrators: there’s something going on here much more complex than most collections, to play with the idea of who is narrating and what the hell is happening, really, in this dreamlike word, acts of violence, identities shifting. There is repetition in the work, and it’s not a long collection, so sort of felt like a dream. But I would have regretted shying away, as I found this book both engaging and accomplished. And while I can be convinced to read a dystopic novel to feel fear for the future, or to read about tragedy to try to find empathy or understanding, I probably would have shied away from this collection if told that it would induce such a feeling of queasy, unease, as if I’d wandered into a kind of 60s renegade Western film, violent scenes and dirty hotel rooms.
I’m not one to watch a horror movie, say, to feel scared. I’ve read many poetry collections in my time, and I found this quite a unique experience.
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