Review by Rachael Clyne of "Killing Spree" by Jorie Graham

In the past I have found the work of this renowned US poet somewhat complex and impenetrable. Killing Spree, in sharp contrast, is spare and stark, in both words and layout. The book reads like a single epic poem covering all aspects of the disastrous period we are facing. How to do it justice in a short review? Many of the poems are thin columns covering several pages, reminding me of an image from the Matrix when streams of data pour down – known as digital rain. Graham manages through her fragmented approach and anaphoric rhythms to shower us with the impact of climate, disease, war and slaughter. We get the full picture through these fragments. Many of us, while still sheltered from the worst impacts, are bombarded daily with images of genocide, floods, fires, oppression, division and hatred. She does not shrink from an apocalyptic view.

A key poem for me is "The Falling," with the image of dice tumbling from the sky, as contagion, war, and slaughter that rain on random targets. And yet the words are more of a broad sweep, allowing us to fill the gaps with our own references and making the whole thing readable without it being a telling rant: "all the new & / improved / viruses shook out their mutations."  Graham talks of "famines, like / bunched veils, reeling with / their new contagions." She audaciously attempts to articulate her vision of the aftermath and how people will survive or not, with poem titles: "When The World Ended," "Tomorrow" and the final poem "Suddenly":

           – what thou lovest well
           remains – it says nothing
           but forgiveness.
           It says repeat after me. And I do.
          

          What have I done.

          Who will I become.

This is an impactful take on the most critical time in history.

About the reviewer

Rachael Clyne is a retired psychotherapist. Her collection Singing at the Bone Tree (Indigo Dreams) is about eco-concerns. Her Seren collection, You'll Never Be Anyone Else, explores themes of identity and otherness, migrant heritage and LGBTQ+. She's currently building a collection that comments on the world state and challenges of ageing.

Review by Jo Dixon of "To 2040" by Jorie Graham

Jorie Graham’s latest collection, To 2040, follows close behind [To] The Last [Be] Human (2022), a tetralogy composed of four earlier collections, spanning 2002 to 2020. Both collections, published by Carcanet, immerse the reader in a world on the brink of collapse, but also a world that still holds wonder for its inhabitants. Robert Macfarlane’s introduction to [To] The Last [Be] Human suggests that the task of the poems in the tetralogy ‘are of record as well as of warning,’ a description that holds true for To 2040. 

Graham’s political / personal odes in this collection elevate the environmental crisis of the near future and the crisis of her own illness. Often, destruction and beauty co-exist within a few lines: 

         Breathe. Yes 
         the drought is everywhere out there
         but in the night

        the stems of stars mist-up
        just enough for u to recall
        when there was 

        humanity, humidity, & the stars

        dangle, sting. Ah there is
        no return 
        is there.

(‘Dusk in Drought’).

Even as the stars stir our hearts, we are stung by knowing that this is just a memory. Tellingly, there is no question mark here, our fate is sealed: ‘there is no return / is there.’ Yet this is not a collection of unrelenting gloom. The poems are invigorating in their formal inventiveness and precise use of language. The surprising lineation, extension of white space, erosion of words (you/u) and accretion of phrases have the effect of tuning us into Graham’s mind; we follow her thoughts as she wrestles with our wilful destruction of the earth, shot through with images of hope. The closing lines of the final poem, ‘Then the Rain,’ encourage us to ‘touch, touch it all,’ and in this last act of connectedness, Graham hints at a way back. 

About the reviewer

Jo Dixon’s collection, Purl, was published in 2020 by Shoestring Press. Her poetry and flash fiction appears in a range of journals and anthologies. She is Lecturer in Creative Writing at De Montfort University, Leicester, and lives in Nottingham.