Reviews

Janet Paisley… whose assured but unshowy phrasemaking, dark figurative palette and metrical elegance made her the most technically adroit poet on display… urgent writing from a writer of whom a great deal more will be heard… The Herald — Donny O'Rourke

Extract

Pegasus in Flight

Now I will not sing to your snapping words

nor dance to your tapping foot.

My wings will no more bear your plucking,

my ear evades your clucking tongue.

And you can raise the whip

and you can draw the fist

and you can bare the fang

but I am gone.

Though sands were set to burn my feet

and snow bit sores into my limbs,

I learned the art

of walking on hot coals.

Now I am deaf while empty swamps cry feed me

and waters wail to find me sleeping in their deeps.

I am in the trees,

seeing the wood

and patient to good time,

pacing a climb that has no pinnacle.

You could not turn me now I am

and your desire could only squeeze

the last single shot that would

set me freer than.