Send The Raven: Poems

In 'Send The Raven', the very poems themselves are like messengers. Sent by the poet, they touch on the symbolist, metaphysical, soothsayer, and nostalgic-which may hold keys or passwords to the larger legend of life. Here, acknowledgement of the human spirit is evident, not separable, from her writing. Susan brings a variety of past worlds to life by reversing and elaborating traditional stanzas and bringing soothsaying echoes of historic form to light. As with previous works, epic book-length prose of 'Sheetstone', 'Honey in the Blood', and the poetry of 'Fragments of the Human Heart', 'Quieter Histories: Winter to Winter', 'Poems from the Alley', Susan Blanshard connects epochs of time with witty irony, subtlety, elegance, imagination, and notable sensuality. Send the Raven is a continuum of the dialogue with past and present histories, what is inherited, possessed and dispossessed; what is remembered and what is known. A passionate conversation that exists at the centre of her poetry.