Moorings brings together Masel’s best work from the last forty years. Jagged and dramatic, these mostly free-verse lyrics direct their taut, plain-speaking voices toward discovery and, sometimes, wisdom. The poems are organised in sections – Returns, Exile, Moorings – suggesting a general move backwards in time. Returns is the largest section and comprises a range of emotions and subjects: a tree full of currawongs, teaching, friendship, love, ageing, dreams. Longer poems take on events and social issues – the difficulty of imagining a home where a woman alone can feel safe, the epidemic of youth suicides, the plight of refugees, the destruction of the World Trade Center. The Exile poems, set in England and Canada, ask questions about newness and familiarity, the rhythm of remembering and forgetting, what should be kept and what jettisoned. With the Moorings section we are returned to Melbourne, family and formative experiences, disobedience and daring. For all its scope and variety, Moorings is a remarkably unified collection, accessible and powerful. | Moorings by Carolyn Masel, Paperback | Indigo Chapters