Merlinda Bobis is a writer whose work transcends… Bobis’s writing, in both her poetry and her prose fiction, is at once reassuring and uncomfortable; it quietly sears as it sings. Her music affirms the power of art and language, offering a portrait of our world which is as unflinching as it is, sincerely, a love song. Read the full review here

From its core, this collection radiates an ambitious vision of kindness. The notion that the heart has space enough to imagine the story that remains unfinished, to attempt to see what lies beyond our borders, is made compelling by Bobis’s immediately intelligent and vivid reading of the world. With a voice courageous as ever, Bobis stays full of novelty and surprise in her generous, beautiful entreaty to look and listen to one another anew.


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Within the lyric lines and vivid imagery, Bobis takes the reader into an experience otherwise unfamiliar or alien. Drawing connections between images and texts, events across time and space, Bobis also expands the meaning of ecology from its physical definition. Every thing and image is an index or reference of another, image and texts are combinations of the known and unknown, our relations are mediated and determined by reasoning with elements beyond our control. One can navigate their fate through a ripple caused by the smallest fish; one can find their love in a different time or in virtual space. Read the full review here.

A very vivid work. Sometimes immediately sensitive/sensual, sometimes deliberately rough-edged, but always well-expressed, well-principled and well-considered, and always thankfully ‘still tuning in’.

 

In these troubled times tainted with fear, hate, and despair, ‘there is hope for us,’ the poems assure us. In them I hear an exquisite polyphony of voices: passionate and poised, sensuous and serene, lyrical and philosophical. Like incantations, these poems ask to be read and heard aloud.  

The volcanics of poem and story are among [Bobis’] driving forces. But here ‘the weight of what we have written’ carries a new urgency. What is at stake is the deep kinship of all life mediated by our own species. Just as a ‘tiny gumnut’ is a ‘primeval dissident’, so the ‘presuming poet’ must keep ‘tuning in’. Awe, grief, joy, love are among her companions of choice. The journey leaves none untouched.