Work of Days

A shell. A kettle as symbol of calm broken. Failed
the bulb held in hand. Failed each motion

of civility. I lost concentration. An empty
glass. Expectation lingers as a loose

floorboard. The weather will not turn. What
I have lost.

With the prisms of varied vocabularies refracting detail and language, Sarah Lang illuminates the intricacies of communication, of the moments and gaps between action and reaction, and, as she does, announces herself as a commanding and rhythmically captivating new poetic presence.

The first section of this extended meditation borrows from The Farmer’s Almanac, while the second is infused with the language of the occult. In the third part, Lang invokes the vocabulary of the institution – the airport, the hospital.

In the end, these linguistic pillagings accrete into a poignant shadow under the letters of Lang’s own words, pulling them into a stark and alluring focus. With echoes of Virginia Woolf, Lang has given us a constellation of poems as delicate and relentless as pure light.

‘With ferocity and tenderness, direction and indirection, with and without hope these staggering poems astonish at every turn. One gets up from them changed.’ – Carole Maso