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First Light by Kate Fagan
JUDGES' COMMENTS
Kate Fagan writes like a composer arranging intonation and modalities into a musical score. In First Light she is keenly aware of the cadence of language as she skilfully intertwines formal attributes with gently warped syntax to make an exacting poetic experiment tempered by lyricism. This superb set of poems is imbued with a relational aesthetic like a group of often-sensuous, mesmeric love letters.
The title section comprises 10 centos, inventive clusters of recombined poems, where each one is dedicated to, or written for, friends and family. This book is steeped in fearless openness and feeling, alongside keenly cognisant and ultimately optimistic thought, as Fagan examines what private and public temporality might mean as we inhabit our constructed world. Her meticulously intimate and generic examining of human relationships with nature and technology confirms poetry’s place as an important instrument of philosophical enquiry. The poems are pellucid, various and joyous; domestic and worldly. This substantial and complex collection offers far more than solace in a difficult world; it is poetry that offers possibility.