Border Crossing

Caitlin Maling’s second volume, Border Crossing, continues to showcase the development of an exciting new voice in Australian poetry.

Now Maling’s poems shift from the first volume’s gritty treatment of childhood and adolescence growing up in WA, to a consideration of what it is to be an Australian in America, where the conflicting voices and identities of home and abroad jostle against and seek their definitions from each other. In this volume, as in the first, her emphasis on place – geography and environment – is as strong as ever.

PRAISE FOR THE BOOK

‘In the face of climate change, cultural fragmentation and estrangement, Border Crossing is a twenty-first century lament for humanity and nature, but is also a paean to the integrity and sagacity of the human imagination, and of poetry itself.’ Peter Minter

‘In this collection, Caitlin Maling continues the strong debut of her award winning book Conversations I’ve Never Had. The almost tidal riding of a familiar, but at times disturbingly different, culture is skillfully handled. Poems about travelling the idiosyncratic countryside of America are pointed, human and fresh. Maling’s borders – those that mark the wonder and complexity of geography, mind and body – are always open to allow us through.’ Caroline Caddy

‘… [Border Crossing] will resonate with many.’ Writing WA

‘Maling’s method is observational and metonymic … her poetic narrative accrues crossing borders between physical elements, the seismic and erogenous, between personal histories and language, intersecting strands of knowledge, biology, physics, inquiry and memory.’ Weekend Australian