Publisher's Synopsis
These poems are preoccupied with stories, the nature of memory, and identity. Many are love poems. From Kidderminster to Paris via Swansea and the Antarctic, taking in a Viennese café and the mysterious Planet X, the work comes close to the edge but remains sure-footed. Things aren't what they seem: background becomes foreground, the periphery and the hidden snap into focus, and 'the photographs on the mantelpiece pull themselves together'. If these poems were an accident, they'd be a train crash: survivors would come round in a different country, dust off their clothes, barely recognise themselves or each other. The poems are in charge of the remote and make full use of it: a Sunday afternoon in suburbia cuts to a journal of polar exploration. Events unfold simultaneously, casting strange lights on each other. Parallel worlds? time travel? or the way in which memories stand beside experience, nudging and colouring it, transforming it into something new and exraordinary. Janet Fisher describes the work as 'a sort of martial art: it stands there looking slight and friendly but in reality it's using the reader's own strength against herself till she ends up flat on the mat not knowing what's hit her.' These poems draw you in, again and again. Compelling, tender and provocative; acutely observed and seriously funny.
