Saturday, July 31, 2021

Liz Quirke The Manchester Review

"As in Anne Carson’s masterful long poem, The Glass Essay (“You remember too much,/ my mother said to me recently.// Why hold on to all that? And I said,/ Where can I put it down?’), the poems in [Liz] Quirke’s collection wrestle with the task of crafting vessels of their own. In 'December(s)', two scenes are presented, a year apart: the first is clipped and stark, and the second unspools, making full use of the page. Elsewhere, there is a cinematographic attention to perspective, so that grief is examined from many angles, all coursing through the speaker: “My father is dirty water sluicing through my veins”." Seán Hewitt Irish Times