The blind singer

The Blind Singer (2009, VUP) is great and not what I was expecting which is always nice. It seems different from (admittedly the little amount of) Chris' work I've read previously. A bit more textural in it's language or something. Quite sensual, yet subtle and a little aloof which I like. She has those nice flat yet inclusive ending down too. She is great at rhythm and music which seems to come very naturally, although I'm sure it takes a lot of hard work. The end of Swan Song:

So then we tried to cultivate the art

of listening. Intent:

even the air in our bones

listening, so hard we heard their own high

hollow crack, crystals of river ice

re-forming. Now we grow old, and what

we've heard has ripened slowly

into song: one melancholy burst

to sear the earth

before we're gone.

Beautiful! I reckon it's in the top 10 NZ poetry books I've read and I'm only up to page 16, so more to come.