The Swerve

Julith Jedamus writes with an intensity that is at once passionate and precise. The poems in The Swerve create unforgettable landscapes: the whorls and spires of juniper in falling snow, Dutch skies of iridescent grey and lilac, the fire-scorched mountains of the American West. They are peopled by dancers and prisoners, sacrificial children and murderous wives; they reshape the imagination. We see the Netherlands in Van Gogh's colours as he walks and works, breathing the twilight, and the Thames in Whistler's; Lorca and Euripides are living presences. The timeless dramas of sacrifice and mourning, rescue and betrayal are re-enacted, meanings dissolved and remade. Long-vanished children walk home through the dark, ghosting a path of sparks'. Like the scull she rows on the Thames, Julith Jedamus's poems skim the fine line / between flying and drowning', unstable as air', dangerous, alive.