Glass Flowers

- Blurb -

In Glass Flowers, Diane Fahey explores many kinds of space - the enclosed spaces of rooms, art galleries, hospital wards, prehistoric caves, the airy, flowing spaces of gardens, and the sky' s infinite life. Her intense engagement with the natural world moves in new directions, ' as we approach the summer years' . While some poems convey the freedom of the present moment - imaged by the long glide of a kelp gull, ' a yielding, shaping gesture' - others invoke the uncanny, as in ' Unearthly' where clouds at sunset, photographed from a space station, send out into space thousand-mile shadows / cutting through that cold radiance, / probing the void. Fahey also directs her gaze at various kinds of creativity - in particular, paintings that explore the inner life of rooms, and self-portraits built from coils and surges of / colour incarnate. The title sequence, based on paintings inspired by the Glass Flowers exhibit at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, combines a far-reaching imaginative ambit with an accent of contemplative calm:And the long stems seemingly lit from within -they too know the touch of sky-shine, the quixotic life of clouds. Let' s call it the provisional sublime. Finally, A Death in Winter, a sequence on the life and death of Leo Semanpillai, a Tamil refugee to Australia, brings forward a tragic narrative of oppression endured to the furthest limit of courage and hope, one that is emblematic of our times.