Anne’s a poet of major standing, and this represents a return to single volume creative work for her on our list without the intimidating bulk of Iovis or the academic concerns of Cross Worlds .
Voice’s Daughter has her trademark musicality, her ever-present argument for a poetics of responsibility, and new frankness about the fatigue of vigilance. It’s Anne’s meditation on the anthropocene, and the very real possibility that our ascendance is a prelude to our destruction.
The device that organizes the poem is William Blake’s Thel, a creature who resists being born for fear of the inevitable grave.
This is political poetry, pointed in its criticisms of hawkish militarism and the schadenfreude of media culture. For Anne, aesthetics, practicalities, and politics all mingle in life and poetic practice.