AustLit

'Within this robust and delicate collection, Morgan Yasbincek simultaneously explores and invokes a constellation of poetic voices that all, ultimately, resolve into the nothing which gives them birth. Presence gives way to absence and absence hints at something beyond a restoration of presence, something her poems take seriously and ground through disruption, 'the vowels of silence', and the truth of life, lived, grieved and continued.

'Ever becoming, and eternally un-becoming, this intimate and sensual collection brings us close to tongues which become plants, daughters who unfold through Ancient Hindu plays and verdant landscapes which are forever speaking of the stillness beyond all things. All is animate, all have voices here, even in the silence and darkness of separation and loss. With Sappho as compañera and the Fragment pointing to what always is, Morgan's crafting of words awakens a world we have always known and always failed to name.' (Publication summary)

'My friendship with Fay was very like so many between women who hold each other in high regard, who would like to know each other at more depth, between whom meeting is delightful, generous, but the meetings themselves are sparse across time for the common reasons we hear in conversations around us every day—no time, distance, responsibilities, work… So I am sorry I have no claim to saying I knew Fay well, though I would have liked to. The context of what I write here is that I visited Fay regularly in the last six months of her life. During a visit after she’d come out of hospital I asked if she would like me to keep in touch and possibly visit regularly and she said ‘Yes’—simply that.'(Introduction)