Have you ever
eaten one food
in mistake for another:
stewed apples for mashed potatoes
pickled ginger for smoked salmon?
Skin, mind, taste buds
are shocked into new born life.
So sudden memories
triggered by walnuts
or orange blossom
like these are
dislocations
I thought I had retired after a long and successful career as a novelist. But the urge to understand and express the world by writing had not entirely disappeared. A few years ago I began stumbling back towards poetry as a way to recall and capture moments that have remained vivid in my memory. From my childhood in England just after the Second World War to my old age in Australia, the death of my husband, and the 2022 floods in the Northern Rivers, these are the elusive fragments of a life.
evocative, heartfelt, lyrical and psychologically astute: (Rubinstein is) a brilliant enigma.
Gay Lynch, author of Unsettled and Hebe’s Lament
