The Quick

Echoes and hauntings, visions and visitations, glimpses of other worlds in the margins of this ... the second collection of poems by Jessica Traynor begins with a brush with death and goes on to explore a startling variety of connections with life, and indeed the living - "the bacterial living / their stain their voices" - and the matter of life itself. From the loss of loved ones to the arrival of a firstborn "no bigger / than a loaf of bread", the poems stay faithful to a busy cast of characters which includes strangers encountered on a moonlit quay, the infamous Lord Haw-Haw and the restless spirits of recent family, national, and international history.