Book description
Julith Jedamus writes with an intensity that is at once passionate
and precise. The poems in The Swerve create unforgettable landscapes:
the whorls and spires of juniper in falling snow, Dutch skies of
iridescent grey and lilac, the fire-scorched mountains of the American
West. They are peopled by dancers and prisoners, sacrificial children
and murderous wives; they reshape the imagination. We see the
Netherlands in Van Gogh's colours as he walks and works, breathing the
twilight, and the Thames in Whistler's; Lorca and Euripides are living
presences. The timeless dramas of sacrifice and mourning, rescue and
betrayal are re-enacted, meanings dissolved and remade. Long-vanished
children walk home through the dark, ghosting a path of sparks'. Like
the scull she rows on the Thames, Julith Jedamus's poems skim the
fine line / between flying and drowning', unstable as air',
dangerous, alive.
