The Swerve [electronic resource]

Jedamus, Julith2012

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Summary

The poems in The Swerve create unforgettable landscapes: the whorls and spires of juniper in falling snow, Dutch skies of iridescent grey and lilac, the fire-scorched mountains of the American West. They are peopled by dancers and prisoners, sacrificial children and murderous wives; they reshape the imagination. We see the Netherlands in Van Gogh’s colours as he walks and works, breathing the twilight, and the Thames in Whistler’s; Lorca and Euripides are living presences. The timeless dramas of sacrifice and mourning, rescue and betrayal are re-enacted, meanings dissolved and remade. Long-vanished children walk home through the dark, ‘ghosting a path of sparks’. Like the scull she rows on the Thames, Julith Jedamus’s poems skim ‘the fine line / between flying and drowning’, ‘unstable as air’, dangerous, alive.