Product Description
Moving non-chronologically through youth and maturity, dreamscapes and time, Shari Kocher’s long-awaited first collection charges the elusive music of cross-generational song-lines—mothers and daughters, daughters and grandmothers, lovers and kin—with the invisibles and intangibles of two decades spent honing her craft. This is a book about breathing. It is also about the changing contours of the journey home, even when the ground of what is meant by home seems most absent, impossible or undone. Rooted in place, yet animated by the immaterial, these poems breathe a body of living and loving alive.
REVIEWS
“Written with Adrienne Rich and Rumi as apparent guides, Shari Kocher’s The Non-Sequitur of Snow… is very different again from the preceding three. Her poems for the most part are of a rare modesty and lightness. The two-page poem Strawberries, for example, narrates a story of a marriage proposal in a strawberry field — that the narrator’s lover doesn’t remember taking place — without becoming icky or indulgent. Clay presents a mother, son and grandmother together making clay angels for a nativity table. The grandmother “hasn’t visited in years”; a comment that creates a separation between the two women.” MICHAEL FARRELL, The Australian
“The twenty-six poems that make The Non-Sequitur of Snow reveal Kocher’s interesting background of having lived and written in many places over the last two decades. A diverse richness of experience is clearly evident in this debut collection which spans dreams, observations, memory and moment…Kocher’s work sustains precision but also embodies a quiet yet deep sensuality.” MONICA CARROLL, TEXT
“The Non-Sequitur of Snow reads as coherent and freshly made even though the poems have been written over a twenty year period. The major concerns of this first collection are the relationship between the self and intimate others, and process, including the process of apprehension itself. The poems evoke heightened moments. Some are at tipping points of extremity: integration and disintegration, safety and violence, change and limits to change. Poems disorientate the reader with synaesthesia and dream narratives. The poem is a place for reflection, often after fracture or challenge, and a crucible for change or transcendence.” SUSAN FEALY, Plumwood Mountain Journal
“There is an airy sense of activity throughout this volume. Kocher’s poetic settings range freely between the material and the imagined, forging connections across generations, yet coming through with surprising steel in some pieces. Structurally the collection is diverse, flowing, and occasionally more experimental…The Non-Sequitur of Snow is a successful combination of lightness and sharp attention to problematic details. The structural shifts of the poems complement the constantly evolving familial relationships detailed within, while bodies are broken down to be better understood. Kocher’s stylistic approach is at once immediate and accessible, yet sharply layered with deeper investigative purposes.” SIOBHAN HODGE, Cordite Poetry Review
