Like a Small City

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Carla de Goede's poems are poems of the celebration of survival. And they are a celebration, even the harrowing, the startling, the shocking poems. They celebrate the survival of the poet and the survival of her attempts to understand her world and to communicate her understanding to us. Although most of her poems seem centred in an urban world, they are infused with an Arcadian magic. Buildings, seen from a train, are 'running like concrete emus'. Pedestrians walk past 'like speeding skinks'. An abandoned house is 'all dark windows / and skulking cats'. A white-coated scientist is 'like a kite stuck in a tree'. The natural world is everywhere in her poems and refuses to be excluded. De Goede's poems are intriguing, unsettling, hopeful, and joyful. She writes of 'scraping ink together / like I know what I'm doing'. She knows what she's doing.