From Base Materials

These poems are apocalyptic and sensory, coming from a place of hurt and love, of the human spirit struggling to transcend "base matter" and make sense of the world."From Base Materials is rich and various in its occasions. It ranges thematically from violence towards women, love in old age and surviving cancer, to translations from Arabic and Russian and a topical re-imagining of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The poems speak of formation and transformation, of the struggles of the human spirit to transmute "base matter" and to accept mortality and the frailty of the flesh with courage and compassion. Around a third of the verses from the Rubaiyat are in concrete shapes underlying the themes of ephemerality (hourglasses) and craftsmanship (pots and vessels) which capture the wry urbanity and rough humour of the throng of voices from the past whose thoughts and observations are now believed to have "composed" this best-loved of poems. For the long poem, "Love in Old Age", Jenny Lewis says: "Although it addresses a lover, it is really about multiple experiences of love (both real and imagined) throughout a long life and how I am as much a literary construct as a human individual. I have drawn on literature that has shaped me, including the Epic of Gilgamesh, early Celtic nature poetry and hermit poetry and, more recently, feminist writings such as those of Helene Cixous".