Publisher's Synopsis
Jane Griffiths is a poet of place who belongs nowhere. She lived in Holland from the age of eight, and writes about the difficulty of belonging in any one place or any one language. Like many in the modern world, she is estranged inside her own country, wherever that is. In these intently observed poems, language becomes her flesh and blood, while the physical world is less than usually solid. House and fields are evanescent, as in paintings. She often uses images of make-do and makeshift. Speech is imagined as a string, love as a kite ('two sticks and tissue skin'). A mattress becomes a life-raft, and many of her houses seem to be under water. In the face of shifting boundaries, her poems are attempted repossessions. The exile comes home in the act of writing the poem, finding it was always there, where she imagined it, not where she thought it was.
