This book, a collection of poetry by the fantastic Kate Garrett,* is among my favourites of recent reading. I read the whole thing in one sitting while on a family holiday, going back during that same long weekend to re-read certain poems over a third or seventh time.** Its themes are broad and deep, touching on faiths lost and wavering and refound, the human challenges of self-realization as mother or daughter, the isolations and solidarities found in disability and disappointment - ultimately there is a strong vein of hopeful healingness throughout and the subtleties herein should prompt most discerning readers to reexamine their lives through lenses of everyday myth, reverent grief and life-affirming love.
* To whom apparently I am 'grand-padawan', she having mentor-inspired my own primary mentor-inspiration in the spoken word world Kinsman.
** Including possibly my favourite of Kate's poems that I've read thus far - Everyone needs a friend when the world begins to end, which for my money sums up the beauty of poetic community in these strange dark times better than anything.
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