A long poem in six sections, Dream House takes its cue from Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Space in its investigation of female embodiment by calling up such feral, liminal spaces as the pregnant body, the aging mind, snail shells, broom closets, low-ceilinged pubs and abandoned pizza boxes. Part Tardis, part townhouse, part Howl’s moving castle, this wry, surreal and many-peopled narrative interrogates what metaphor might hold of history, both personal and social, in the wake of a mother’s passing. Its migrant speaker trawls through hedgerows and recipe books to unearth stained birdsong and undead civil wars, intent on tracing a matrilineal path across four generations while traversing the haunted margins between existence and belonging.
