'child in the wings' | poetry | ISBN 978 1 877010 125 | 108 pgs | Apr 2019 | $20.00 within Australia
‘what authority does the once-child have
to speak from her adult mouth
like a hybrid bird of prey
preying on its own chick-self
cuckoo in the nest
cuckoo cuckoo’
from child in
the wings
A stunning achievement. Simultaneously a verse-memoir and a lyrical investigation of the tension between memory
(Mnemosyne's ‘frothing, glinting’) and forgetting (Lethe's ‘slurry’), complicated by 'the child that pops out/now and
then/ from under the blanket'. This is incredibly beautiful, resonant, hypnotic writing - spare in diction,
fragmentary and dream-like in its framing - with subtle undercurrents. Bowery skilfully balances narrative
drive with looping timelines, recurrent motifs, and interludes of playful word games and concrete poems which
explore sonically and visually this contested, unreliable yet haunting territory.
Melinda Smith