Daphne Gloag writes remarkable poems of cosmic scale. Yet, taking complex concepts such as time and cosmology as her references leads not to dense inaccessibility, but to conversational meditations on the human condition. Essentially her work is about love; effective and moving pieces about loss, about how we go on loving in the face of mortality, about what time might mean when weighed against the power of human emotion.
In this exquisite sequence the carefulness of the research shines out, but even brighter is the enduring nature of love.
Praise for Daphne Gloag's previous work:
- "Her treatment of the scientific components of her writing is both authoritative and poetic. These features are best seen in the sections presented of a long poem, "Beginnings", which reveal great humanity and strong but quiet passion: and running delicately through which is subtle and beautifully wrought description of a love relationship. An example of the interweaving of cosmology and human life are the following simple yet wonderfully powerful three lines: "They played Bach and Twinkle twinkle little star / not knowing what a star is / or the violence of stars. This is, without question, an important collection." John Latham on A Compression of Distances
- "These poems bridge the emotional gap between our planet's 'precarious terrain', rendered here with the fascinated and selective precision of a painter, and that 'large space' beyond, whose intimate bearing on us, both creative and destructive, we are now beginning to grasp. Emerging into the speculative space between two voices, they help us realise with unusual intensity the value of life, of love and of 'words existences that could not be undone' – having once come to be, all are for ever 'a part of the universe'." Anne Cluysenaar on Beginnings