Sugar and Bones

Emma Fayelecaun's poetry draws on the imagery of myth and mysticism to create a lens through which her readers may view both her world and their own. Her work is personal, flavoured by the experience of womanhood and suburban family existence, but rather than rooting itself in the confessional genre, it reaches towards an existential exploration of the stuff that underpins the domestic realm. Fayelecaun's language moves from dark viscerality to linguistic whimsy, and her lines tell of an intensely lived existence juxtaposed against the constrictions of daily reality. This is the voice of a woman as she births herself, catches her reflection in a mirror at midlife and witnesses herself scattering her own ashes. - Rebecca Rushbrook