14x18 cm, 16 pages, 250 gsm "Natural" Strata card cover with colour illustration, black endpapers, hand sewn with red twist.   ISBN 1 903090 31 8      The cover illustration is a detail from Garbogawd by Jim Andrews, www.vispo.com Click here for Alison Croggon's home page. Ordering Information See below for author's note and extract.

 Author's Note:

Alison Croggon is an Australian poet, born in 1962. Her books include the collection The Blue Gate and the novel Navigatio. She has written the libretto for the operas The Burrow and Gauguin and is currently working on The White Army. Her plays include The Famine and Samarkand. She is a founding editor of Masthead literary magazine.

from Mnemosyne:
 

    II

no eye no fingerprint no nose no lips no voice unnamed unthought
unknown un

til the brain's soft galaxy

unlids itself and sucks the tang of sea

dividing into time

cell by cell by cell

 

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III

I tried to remember when my sister was born what it was like to be
inside my mummy but I could never remember all I got was blank

I pressed my eyes to get all dark the red suns under my fingers
opened and closed

I wished I could ask my sister because she was soon enough to
remember but she couldn't talk yet and talking meant forgetting

I listened to the waves across my mummy's belly it's the baby she
told me and I wondered

I never could remember
 

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V

does the cell grieve when it splits? does the ovum wince at the sperm?

does the grain cry out as it bursts open? does the laurel scream its
leaves of flame?

becoming other becoming one becoming other: the surface tears and
heals: a mouth breaks open:

light dazzles off the skin: the eye blinks shut: when it wakes everything
is different

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