‘Alight on all things precious’ – double launch

Double the enjoyment – two great launches

Emilie Collyer, at the Library at the Dock, Melbourne, 22 February

Indeed, alight… on precious things

• to pause on them, land on them lightly.
• to shine a light on them, illuminate them.
• to set something on fire.

The multiple meanings of the title of Sarah’s beautiful collection introduces us to how playful and clever with language this book is, and also how every poem has multiple strands and potential interpretations. Each image or artwork and its accompanying words are doing a large amount of work for such lightness. Reminding us to always look again, to feel for unusual connections, to slow down, to let otherness be present. Each poem, each moment awakens newness within us.

Jen Webb at Canberra Museum And Gallery, 14 March

I see, in the poems, a series of philosophical principles, to the extent that I read this as a three-way conversation: artists, philosophers, and poet.

Sarah writes in the preface:

Word and image … are caught in each other’s cross-beams … these poems try not so much to make sense of the artworks but to sense them.

And as I read the collection, I find myself caught in their cross-beams; in their conversation with each other; and in sensing the points of connection.

Both Emilie and Jen’s speeches will be published soon in Rochford Street Review – keep an eye out to read them in full

Introducing the Liquid Amber range