The Myopic's Vision

'Virginia Lowe's poems evoke life experiences such as parenting, marriage, and growing up and meditate on them in moving and unexpected ways. This latest collection displays her hallmark wry humour and tenderness, linking intense personal moments to wider human concerns. And her love of language and reading shines throughout her poetry.' - Christopher Ringrose

'A poem a year, traversing birth to illness, to the consideration of death, wrapped in a shifting chronology of overwhelming joy and heart, Lowe melds time and the events of childhood, adolescence, adulthood, love, rights, education, to great-grandparenting, always keenly observed with an eye to how the past informs the future, parting the telling ways of what it is to be human, in a world and life of the landscape of experience.' - James Walton

'Virginia observes many small articles and actions of family life, always moving to the relationship they signify. This has been called "domestic poetry" - a term once used in disparagement of poets who did not foreground great men of war and politics, or the themes of time-honoured mythology. To my mind, domesticity is even more worthy of close observation and exact tracing of meanings: After all, it is a large percentage of everyone's life.' - Judith Rodriguez