Cirrus@Austlit

(Publication summary)

'Some words are not easily used by poets. For example, writers have had to argue for a long time on behalf of the word Domestic. Domestic references and themes like family life, a focus on children, households, household labour, gardens, food, a daily walk…have been belittled in the past and seen as unworthy of poetry, even somehow inherently unpoetic. There is a general understanding about the grand tradition, that great public themes like war, the glories of history, or great abstractions like Love and Death have had the upper hand, so to speak.' (Introduction)

'Lilith and Ross have always been moving; from Cervantes on the Turquoise Coast, to Calgary in Canada, and places in between. Now, in middle-age, the work at home has dried up and they’re back in Calgary, where many years before they suffered a miscarriage and where decades later they have returned for yet another new start.

'While Ross works away on the oil rig for weeks on end, Lilith unpacks their apartment and is confronted with the need to balance being alone with true loneliness. Her mind wanders, back to the windy plains and white sand beaches of the Turquoise Coast, to her strained and damaged relationships with her parents and brother, to the love between her and Ross and the ache of missing her daughters. She is reminded of the compromises she has made for this life of uncertainty. Of the achievements and disillusionments of her many selves — wife, mother, friend, lover, sister, daughter, artist, expat.

'Brimming with dualities, Personal Effects deals with the ambiguity of life, and the decisions we make in the hope that they will change our lives for the better.'' (Publisher's blurb)