鈥淚F/ YOUR lover asks you to bite his tongue, Then/ do it/ Else you are alone and bloodless鈥︹�� So begins Heidi Williamson鈥檚 poem If Then Else, in her debut collection Electric Shadow. A footnote explains that the phrase is a logic statement with 鈥渘o scope for ambiguity鈥�. Yet in this body of work Williamson harnesses ambiguity, turning logic into poetry.
Inspired by a residency at the London Science Museum鈥檚 Dana Centre, Williamson鈥檚 poems move swiftly through a range of material: a M枚bius strip is followed, and followed again; and Nobel prizewinner Dorothy Hodgkin鈥檚 hands are immortalised within a poem鈥檚 frame. Dark, fairy tale-like poems tell of materials that are both transmuted and moulded by force. The ambivalence and violence evoked by these poems is analogous to that present in the fundamental science that shapes our universe.
Poetry of motion
Bloodaxe Books