Songs That Remind Us of Factories

The poems in Songs that Remind Us of Factories explore how we

remain connected: to the world outside, to our ideas of home, to

each other, and to ourselves. In their searching, these magpie poems

strike a balance between wound language and quiet meditation,

the arched-brow wisecrack and the emotionally frank gesture. The

result is an honest and playful sequence of poems that plumb our

myriad reactions when small wildernesses occasionally come inside.

The book's final section asks whether we may not be too

connected. They mine a world of rapid technological and commercial

growth for its poetic potential, focusing on work in call centres,

postmodern spaces where the walls of dying suburban malls have

been repurposed with "fishnets of fibre-op" and "chain gangs of

chopped desktop/Dells"; where "you're licked/ before the call comes

kicking in."

This is a poetry that refuses to stagnate in one mode, wearing

all manner of poetic hats while always avoiding drab lyrical sentiment.

With a jumpy musicality and a taut line, these poems wander

far, zeroing in on moments of daily connection while also opening

wider their frame of reference to explore the often fractured links

we have to family and loss, science and religion, the idealized rural

and the newly urban.