AustLit

Many of the poems in Brook Emery's Collusion are about the sea, but the sea does more than supply him with material: it shapes his interaction with the world. Compared to the sea, the land is a much easier medium on which to project plans and migrations. Those close to the sea, however, tend to be less sanguine about such things. It is, after all, the element that, proverbially, we must never take for granted. Something of this respect enters Emery's work as a reluctance to draw conclusions: as if they were a step too far, or smacked of hubris. In his previous book, Uncommon Light (2007), the rhythms and thought patterns were those of the swimmer, for whom there was at least a sense of progression - even if only illusory, besides the sea's scale, and its gridlessness. In Collusion, however, there is little expectation of forward movement - with the caveat that though the poems do not arrive at understandings, they do converge towards an assertion of happiness. Many of the poems display a static antiphony between the self - most commonly represented as a question - and the universe of things that don't answer. Sometimes Emery addresses Ka a's K, the patron saint of fruitless questions. More often there is no addressee. Whatever the question, there will be no answer. Answers are claims, and by being so wary of them, Emery aligns himself with that broad spectrum of poets, across an increasingly wide range of poetics, who do not trust them.' (Author's abstract)