Wildness Rushing in

In this amazing first collection of poetry, Habsbawn-Smith displays a skill and passion for capturing and creating experience through language. Here is a new, and original voice that sparks with intelligence in its full-tilt explorations of nature, solitude, joy, loss and love. At once sensory, contemplative, compassionate and packed full of startling insights, Wildness Rushing In is an exciting and accomplished poetic debut. It will come as no surprise to readers of wildness rushing in that dee Hobsbawn-Smith is also an accomplished chef. Here is a feast of tastes and flavours arriving from many regions and nooks of existence, served up with a wisdom that knows its wordless loveliness in loss equally with its sharp jolts of awe. She’s been there, and brought them to the writing with passion and wit. Savour the lovingly evoked texture of Bennett’s old garage, with its Victory Bond poster and the typewriter ribbon unspooling from a shelf; the cow moose with its dancer’s drawl; that painful moment when a lover’s movements undressing flashes back to the father’s arm reaching for the belt. These finely focussed poems invite us into a sensuous and emotionally rich landscape: o taste and see. - Don McKay