Sea Scale

Sea Scale comprises thirty new poems and a generous selection from Brook Emery's previous five volumes. From and dug my fingers in the sand, his first book, to Have Been and Are, his most recent, reviewers have noted the fluency and tacility of his writing and the range of his thinking and allusions. His poetry is speculative, always wondering, occasionally playful, always trying to make sense of the complexities of the material, spiritual and rational worlds. The inter-weavings of mind and brain, language and culture, nature and society, time and memory are all swept up in this enquiry. His particular skill is to render abstract and intellectual issues in sensuous and physical imagery. Ever-present is the sea which, while sometimes performing metaphoric or symbolic functions, is always its material self: 'the glittering humpbacked sea, the thousand flickering things the mind lights on and tries to hold.'