By Beatriz Copello, published in Compulsive Reader
This reviewer chose to read and review my chapbook before looking at Breaking into Pentridge Prison, the memoir which it accompanies. She felt she was best qualified to deal specifically with the poetry – which is fine, as I had wanted the chapbook to be able to stand alone.
In fact the two people I approached for the back cover blurb also experienced it without seeing the memoir until later – though each had known me a long time, and I think had some awareness of my work in Pentridge. Beatriz, however, was a stranger to me.
How fascinating to me, to see what a complete stranger with no knowledge of the back story would make of the chapbook! She found it, initially, somewhat more mysterious than I had expected or intended – but then, it does, as Tony Page says on the back cover, have 'a deliberate lack of specifics.'
Some of her comments startled me (not necessarily a bad thing); others gratified me. It's always good to be told that one's writing has moved and engaged a reader!
Click on the link above if you too would like to check out her assessment.
