Vexations

A mother and daughter journey together through a strange speculative world in this experimental book-length poem. Annelyse Gelmans book-length poem Vexations is a surreal, glitchy meditation on empathy, ecology, and precarity. Throughout the book winds a narrative about a mother and daughter as they move through a world of social and economic collapse in search of a post-capitalist safe haven. All the while, they also navigate a condition that affects the daughters empathic abilities, making her vulnerable to emotional contagion. Vexations is titled and structured after Erik Saties composition of the same name, a piece that requires patience, endurance, and concentration from both its audience and its players. Similarly, Gelmans Vexations employs repetition and variation to engage the readers attention. Hers is an ambient poetry, drawing on the aesthetic qualities of drone music and sampling voices and sounds to create a lush literary backdrop filled with pulsing psychedelic detail.