'Siarad is a volume of poetry and prose by Caroline Reid, a playwright and repeat finalist in the Australian Poetry Slam. The word “siarad” is Welsh for “to talk; to speak,” and this collection is partly about the idea of the voice as an authentic expression of self. However, as the reader might expect given Reid’s background, Siarad is primarily concerned with the performative nature of speech: speaking as oration, story-weaving, lying, the telling of deeper truths, myth and fable, and siren song. Reid’s poems and short stories are allegorical in their impact: seemingly mundane events are elevated to the symbolic and the sacred.' (Introduction)