AustLit

'Powell’s new poetry collection is a study of a fantasist, stuck between the everyday and imagined worlds, between small moments and monstrous cities. Gentle Creatures puts a new shine on the domestic. This is a different way of looking at the world. It is a book of intersections. The past speaks to a possible future, married people speak wordlessly in airconditioned rooms, a fat girl is becoming furniture. Cities are turning into trees and weeds, there are dreams of going to Chinatown with old lovers. There are suburbs, freeways, country towns with wide crossroads. There is danger and joy. In Gentle Creatures, Powell reveals the private and unspoken in the hope of finding a common experience with the reader. It is a deep dive into the part of her brain where the gentle creatures live. She is in search of the second skin of the everyday, making her way through sex, the body, girlhood, nature, family and new marriage. Written just after returning home to Melbourne after a decade overseas, these poems also represent the longing and uncertainty of displacement, the feeling in your bones when you know it is time to come home. The newness and trepidation of when you finally get there. Told in two movements, Gentle Creatures and Birthday Dresses, this is a collection of textures and tastes, creating a world where the mundane glitters and the past aches from the room next door.' (Publication summary)