A world without maps

In poems that range from the minimalist to the theatrical, Jane Simpson evokes the fascinatingly unfamiliar world of the Arabian Peninsula, where she found her preconceptions about Muslim women completely shattered. She writes of home and family with great tenderness. Choked forms wonderfully match the sensations of grief. In a synthesis of home and abroad, science and art, the poems reveal a compassionate, searching gaze in a world without maps.

A richly textured, poetic meditation upon the power and influence

of geography. … compassionate, lyrical and resolute.

– Siobhan Harvey

The poet’s magpie mind and perceptive eye is ever coming across glittering facts and shiny images to hold up to her reader’s gaze.

– James Norcliffe

The loss of a mother, and the loss of a city … the dance between East and West. How fitting that, as the work of a peacemaker, it concludes with a kiss.

– Bernadette Hall