Sekonyer River

There are three main branches in Karen Harrison’s poetry – mythological interpretation, journeying and intimate experiences. These sometimes intertwine, sometimes stay parallel. And the crown is full of movement with falling leaves at the edge of summer (her primordial sorrow) and elegant trembling of language. The movement is often a pulse. Some poems maintain their distance, others crush you with their closeness. But this is not a feminine poetry of attraction and sentiment, anticipating and inducing, it is a traveller’s poetry in which the poet floats free with her images and readers solely dependent on the river’s currents. A confirmation of Heraclitus’ ‘Everything is one.’ Where rivers are trees from above. This is Karen Harrison’s first poetry collection in English, originally published in 2011 and now reprinted in 2018. Her second poetry collection, Night-Singing Bird, is also available from Small Stations Press.