Leslie Harrison’s collection marks the arrival of an assured new poetic voice. Chosen as the winner of the 2008 Bakeless Prize in poetry by guest judge Eavan Boland, Displacement addresses questions of place and, of course, displacement—from marriage and home—and explores the aftershocks of being uprooted physically and emotionally. Paired with Harrison’s natural, keen sense of rhythm, the central themes of impermanence and loss are heightened by the poems’ impeccable structure.
In a masterful display of formal precision, the collection is filled with "engaging contradictions," says Eavan Boland. In her introduction, Boland writes, "There is a poignancy, poise, and a presence about this book and about its traffic between secrecy and disclosure that allows it to have an unusual force, and a true grip on its reader. This is a real lyric journey; and the reader will take it, too."
How does a life find its new shape after being broken apart?
- Poems About Divorce and Rebirth: Charting the painful, precise territory of a marriage’s end and the difficult questions of what comes after.
- Nature as Witness: From the quiet woods to the banks of a river, the natural world offers a complex mirror to the shifting inner landscape of the heart.
- A Journey Through Place and Identity: The collection travels from the backroads of the "Fifty States" to the mythical labyrinth, asking what it means to be at home in the world and in oneself.
- Formally Precise, Emotionally Resonant: Selected by Eavan Boland for the Bakeless Prize, these masterfully structured poems demonstrate a profound control of rhythm and language to explore chaotic emotional depths.