Far-Flung

Far-Flung traverses multiple terrains #8211; home and upheaval, our connection to the environment and to people, our relation to the past, place and placelessness. From #8216;the Kilmog slumping seaward' to #8216;the bracts and the berries and the leaves' of the Mackenzie country; the moth (#8216;courier of bloom powder'); the wind that grows like an animal and #8216;the great loneliness / of grass' #8211; Gallagher is in conversation with the natural world. Her lyric poems, marked by attentiveness, have an earthy, intuitive music and a linguistic clarity.Gallagher moves easily from the ecological and personal concerns of contemporary life to the nineteenth-century Irish migrants and the historic legacy of the Seacliff Lunatic Asylum. The multi-voiced, dramatic sequence #8216;Seacliff Epistles' draws on a rich variety of poetic forms: from lyric to prose poem, parable to riddle, monologue and letter poem. Bill Manhire called Rhian Gallagher's...