The Visitations

The physical and the metaphysical meet, and questions of new motherhood are set against those of faith and the larger conundrum of how to live in this newest collection of poetry from Kathryn Simmonds. As in her debut collection, an appealing, deceptively simplistic voice prevails in these verses, though subtle shifts of language and perspective imply darker themes and worlds unseen. The tone is often simultaneously satirical and elegiac and the volume abounds with sudden moments of strange illumination: a lime tree strikes up a conversation; a life coach finds an old passport; an infant teeters on the brink of speech.