Description
Book SynopsisAnnemarie Austin's vividly imaginative poems explore other worlds and other lives, drawing upon her own memories and experiences, as well as on art, travel, dream, myth, history and literature. The first poem in her new collection asks 'Shall we go on the shiny?', the last one ends 'being altogether gone this time'. In between there's the tightrope, 'The Walking Shot', the report on the pilgrimage in progress, the marquise going out at five o'clock. The eye moves left to right along with the poems' movement. Though there are stops from time to time, for problems of the unidentified, the location of waterholes, whether or not those birds are oystercatchers, for the interior of a pocket and Nijinsky jumping. Then on, maybe to the beach again. Shall We Go? is Annemarie Austin's eighth book of poetry, following her Bloodaxe retrospective, Very: New & Selected Poems (2008) and later collection Track (2014).
Trade ReviewLack of ostentation is part of the appeal of Austin's work. It voices mysteries with elegant composure. The mundane is met on its own terms, then all at once titled, a strangeness exposed. Sometimes the art is in the omission... Track is a book of many themes and explorations. Again, it reminds us of a poet whose technical control, musicality and gift for subtle surprise deserve wider notice. -- Carol Rumens * The Guardian *
Austin's poems are full of intriguing images, with jounreys and transitions as their main themes. Another concern in the capturing of fleeting details... But beneath the plain language and form, the uncanny and the terrible are never far away. -- Juanita Coulson * The Lady *
Austin is a fable maker. Hers is a poetry of parts held together by powerfully imagined dream associations. As her world deliquesces and reforms, her imagination breathes life into other people in other times, weirdly authenticating the material she draws from history. -- Anne Stevenson
Table of Contents11 Shall We Go on the Shiny? 12 Nail File 13 Anything with Beak or Bill 14 Fruit 15 Slow and After 16 Dances 17 Anything with Paws Before Its Eyes 18 Pincer 19 Form 21 Problem 25 Polly Vaughan – Variations 27 The Unidentified 29 Razzle-dazzle 31 Botafumeiro 32 Camino 33 True Vessel 34 Which Conceals the Location of Waterholes 35 Hole 36 Between the Yews 37 Marquise 39 The Unspoken 40 Latent Levitation 41 Line Drawing 42 Tightrope 43 The Walking Shot 44 The Misses Booth Photographed by Camille Silvy 46 The Tour 47 In Sight 48 Maybe Oystercatchers 49 Waterscape 50 Wishes for the Poem as Object 52 Table/Field 53 Godney 54 Kids Don’t Take Walks 56 I Go on It and 61 Grey Area 62 Like My Pocket 64 Cut Out 65 Nijinsky Jumps 67 It (after Linnaeus) 68 Lop-sided 69 Bringing in the Washing 70 The Place of Stations
