Midwest

Caitlin Maling's poems confront where we are now in the history of planetary time, and what biosphere remains for the children (human and extra-than-human) being raised within it.

Midwest wrestles with the effects of climate catastrophe on the mid-north western coastal ecologies of Western Australia, specifically Ningaloo Reef, Denham, Geraldton and the Turquoise Coast. Set both in and out of the water, from the lenses of diver, parent and terrestrial being, throughout these poems, the speaker interrogates stromatolites, fails to fear sea snakes, and speaks to leopard sharks and dead poets. Written in her familiar, conversational and unsentimental, register, Caitlin Maling's poems confront where we are now in the history of planetary time, and what biosphere remains for the children (human and extra-than-human) being raised within it.