AustLit

'Vanessa Page’s fifth collection of poetry, Botanical Skin, is as resonant as a bell ringing out at dusk – a liminal time. Indeed, several of Page’s poems are set at dusk, and she is often concerned with the blurring of boundaries, the breakdown of barriers, and the breaching of borders. Split into two alliterative sections, “Body” and “Bloom,” Botanical Skin is concerned with another “b” word: blue. In her forward, Page quotes Yves Klein: “Blue has no dimensions, it is beyond dimensions.” Page observes that poetry also transcends dimensionality. Certainly, this is true of Botanical Skin. Although it is divided into two sections, poems call to each other across the divide, with words often recurring throughout, including forms of “bloom,” “love,” and “deep.”' (Introduction)