In And to Ecstasy, Marjon Mossammaparast crafts a glimmering dream-like collection of poetry divided into three parts: [There], [Here] and F i e l d.

Mossammaparast is an award-winning poet, living and teaching in Melbourne. She has lived across many countries, having resided in Iran, Italy, China, Macau and now Melbourne, Australia. These places are the roots of this collection.

In [There] and [Here], the poems are attached to a place or a time. They focus on the relationship between landscape and time: history is drawn into the present and landscape is projected into the past. The collection invites different interpretations depending on perspective, as encapsulated by the collection’s opening lines: ‘Body in time, always moving, past clouds, finding an equator/ Moving time, body always, past finding clouds in an equator / Past always moving, body, finding clouds an Equator in Time.’ I particularly enjoyed the way Mossammaparast’s poems are laid out on the page, in two columns almost as if there are two voices speaking to (or perhaps over) each other, inviting you to read them in different orders.

I also felt a thrill of recognition reading her poems set in Melbourne, for how she describes the taste of the air, the feeling of the landscape in ‘M1 Freeway’ and ‘Glen Waverley’, and the recovering bushland as ‘black skeletons in green’, which captures an ambivalence in the Australian landscape.

In F i e l d, Mossammaparast turns towards cosmology, to the collision of science and spirituality. I found this section the most compelling. Mossammaparast renders landscapes that are grounded yet otherworldly. Poems such as ‘Heart’ and ‘Interpretation’ stood out for the elegance and thoughtfulness of the phrasing.

Overall, And to Ecstasy is a fascinating collection. Although in some cases I found the richness of the language overshadowed meaning, the focus on perspective and interpretation was particularly exciting. I would highly recommend picking this one up.

Stephanie King is a bookseller at Readings Emporium.