I'm very pleased to be here to launch Extinctions. It's a lovely chapbook which I was very proud to publish – the second chapbook by Sandra from PressPress. We're a bit of a fan, as you can see. There are good reasons for this.
I like Sandra's work: it is informed by performance I think – not a 'performance poet' - of the shouting, ego-ridden kind but with a precise and clear diction on the page which makes it accessible and, at times, shocking as she turns a poem on a linguistic point (an image, a pun, a disruption of the expected).
Thibodeaux also has a penetrating sense of the ridiculous – which is always going to endear her to me – for example in 'Toll' where it begins with the poet musing on a tanker that carries 'air products' through many absurd tricks, and ends with a semantic twist which shapes language to her own purpose, and brings us along with her.
We come along for the ride even when we know she is playing with us, or perhaps playing us. One of my favourite poems in this collection is 'One or two poets make love' where she trips our idea of what the poem is from one frame of reference to the next and back again. You are never quite sure whether the poet referred to in the poem is an alter ego or a lover (now there's an eternal question!). This is easy to read but exceptionally hard to do: Thibodeaux is clever and crisp.
Sometimes there is a devastating simplicity ('Keeping Mum') and sometimes beauty rears up out of the darkness (I'm thinking here of 'Traffic Island'). You never quite know what this diverse little collection will bring next.
It's great to launch this chapbook. Actually, I'm looking forward to the next one. As I said, I'm a bit of a fan. Congratulations Sandra. Extinctions is lovely chapbook.
Chris Mansell
Darwin, 31 July 2010
[Chris Mansell is a poet and publisher of PressPress.]
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