Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By Fiona Wright, Giramondo Publishing, $24.00.
Written around the time of Wright’s award-winning collection of essays Small Acts of Disappearance, many of these poems share with that work her acute sensitivity to the details that build our everyday world.
They also hold us enthralled, in highly charged moments of emotional extremity.
‘Anxiety lurks in domestic spaces, it inhabits the most ordinary objects, like a drill bit or a phone charger, it draws our attention to the bruised body and its projecting parts.’ The elements of language take on new intensity in a series of ‘overheard’ poems ‘fraught with their speakers’ vulnerability and their attempts at resolution’.
Walking us through the places where this drama unfolds is an eye-opener. In the southwest where she grew up; it’s presented as sites of love, sorrow, help and asset, as well as, disquiet.
The world we live in is, indeed, intriguing.
