Colin Hamilton has combined the visible and the invisible into a truly unusual first book. In three poetic sequences, The Memory Palace weaves layers of psychological narrative into separate versions of an inner biography. The writing is exquisite, the mysteries engaging, and the result original. –Marvin Bell The poetry, page after page, is of the kind that keeps the reader on the critical edge, both ecstatic and lucid, both active and illumined… . What began in the first part of the book with the evocations of a struggle to unclench a rock-locked fist’ is projected, in the end, on the geography of the continent itself, desolate yet lyrical. Nothing more exotic here than the beauty of utterance set free. –Stavros Deligiorgis