Poems about kinship being something much larger than blood.

There is a strong ecological intelligence underneath the collection, but the poems remain attentive rather than declarative. Stone, creek, skin, birds, light, steel and memory all become ways of thinking through relation. In poems such as ‘Between’, language itself becomes a threshold: the “thin place between the word and the thing”, where intimacy and loss are felt without ever becoming completely sayable.

Elvey’s background in ecological criticism and theology is present in the work’s concern with attention, responsibility and forms of belonging, but lightly worn. It avoids turning the non-human world into metaphor, and makes it an active participant. Her first full-length poetry collection, and a particularly lovely piece of Australian ecopoetry.

Edition / Condition: Five Islands Press, Parkville, Victoria, 2014. First edition. Paperback. Very light shelf wear to covers; internally clean and unmarked, binding firm. Near fine condition.