Poetry--Collections

Through the worlds of cause and effect, forms, and formlessness, echoing the structure
of the shrine Borobudur, this work explores these convergences: Paul Oppenheimer's
argument that the best origin of sonnet is sonitus, the music of the spheres perceived in
this world as a deafening; the experience of Borobudur 's rectangular stone reliefs within
a structure that looks angular but is circular; and a deaf woman's observation that vowel
sounds conflate on faces under the duress of pleasure or pain. The attempt, as the sonnet
moves through the volume, interrupted four times by poems of other types, is to
experience what seems, like stone or path, a most syllogistic of forms, as mandala.
Throughout, the relationship between sight and sound is explored, using homophones,
syntax working with and against parts of speech and lineation, hearkening to words that
keep as unresolved as possible the vowel sounds, as brogues do, and tonal languages.

Otway is a verse collection that explores the journey of the self in isolation. The
collection commences with the narrator's inability to make sense of involuntary isolation.
The subsequent melancholia prompts the narrator's journey of self-exploration, which
progresses outward into the natural world. This journey is signified through the
narrator's travels, which bring her into direct contact with the numinous (nature).
Consequently, both narrator and numen become integrated, leading to the transformation
of solitude as "undesirable" space into "sacred" space, one in which self-discovery can
occur.