What is Near - Paperback

by Kay Syrad (Author)

[P]oems like delicate essays, in the sense of attempts-circling, being-with, tentative and tender [...] poems like seed heads, fragility and delicacy, balanced, a symmetry [...] seeding more thinking [... a tender] engagement with moss, air, horizon, the political, the scientific, the human, the non-human and the spaces-between where these things meet. The space on the page, within the poems, and between the poet writing and the world observed, is so delicately balanced.
- Dr. Kim Lasky

slow build
inside/outside
what is left unsaid
what is beneath
what is noticed
what is undeclared
what evolves, enmeshes, becomes, denies
visual-like camouflage
like a movement-eyes dance on page, not sure where to go
feeling accumulate through pattern of words - many unsaid, but felt
What is near talks about what is far-deep time-what is within-unsaid
earth suffering earth joy, despite it all
- Chris Drury

[an exploration of] the political, the specifics of natural things (eg. birds, moss, trees, landscape), boundaries and spaces; and the sense of place, all with sensuality and infinite sensitivity, including the self and its relationship to nature. We were especially aware of how [the poems] handle the very contemporary sense of language with all its problems of reference [exploring] the interconnectedness of all things through linguistic and visual means.
- Professor Peter Abbs & Dr. Lisa Dart