In Penumbra, Kate
Behrensʼ third collection, the poems are linked by themes of dislocation and
heredity. If the dead are ever-present here, so is love: the absence of, rewards
and longing for it, the endurance and effort of it.
We are led from the poetʼs bohemian childhood to the complex
grief, in middle age, that followed the death of her painter father, and on to individual
animals, people, and even trees that are differently uprooted or burdened. Everything
is haunted here, but the boundaries of death and love are permeable, nature
full of revelation.
‘These are poems with huge scope. They speak personal
lament, love, whilst looking up also to wide horizons of thought, and exposing
the “secret doings” of the world. They are poems alive with surprising images,
unexpected turns. This is a very achieved and compelling collection’ – Steven
Matthews
Responses to Man with
Bombe Alaska (2016):
ʽ… the lines move with hallucinatory clarity, the syntax is
unexpected, but break by break the poem implies an ever-expanding context. This
is the language of poetry: lines that might never be spoken, but which have
been wrought until they are more accessible, more natural, than daily speech’ –
Dennis Nurkse
ʽ… will reward repeated readings and resonate long after the
page is turnedʼ – PBS Bulletin