Kate Fagan – The Long Moment
Salt Publishing
$19.95
Kate Fagan is an exceptional Australian poet and musician whose collection, The Long Moment, was published in 2002. Her latest offering is First Light (Giramondo Press) published last year. Her work has appeared in Meanjin, Salt and Calyx: 30 Contemporary Australian Poets. Fagan’s previous works are the chapbooks Thought’s Kilometre (Vagabond Press) and return to a new physics (Tolling Elves). This is a slim and beautiful collection spanning 105 pages, and a work that revisits the former collection.
Think science, music, geology, biology and mathematics. Fagan’s poetic ear is finely tuned and her poems are polished and each is a humble image. Reflect on how these small moments expand outwards and approach complex themes. The first section Calendar starts at April and continues on with 9 prose poems which expands on the idea of organisation on a monthly basis, becoming somewhat of a diary. My favourite lines are from (august) with ‘Emptying over a balcony, slow light recalls the loss of a city.’ There’s something that’s both simplistic about the nature, but also knowing in its grief. Grief, too, is a slow process of gathering oneself. Read more…