The Infant Vine (Isabella G Mead, UWAP)

Isabella G Mead’s debut collection, The Infant Vine, speaks to the deeply elemental nature of motherhood. In these poems, the line between what is human and what is animal becomes ever more obscured; a human mother becomes a sea dragon, a drifting thing somewhere between plant and creature; her caesarean scar becomes a shark bite, a reminder of the fierceness of her daughter’s entry into the world; and in her rage, the mother becomes an alligator, snapping an invasive drone out of the sky. Mead’s poems often engage with art, leading the reader into the quietly astonishing work of Barbara Hepworth in ‘Genesis’ and ‘Midwinterish’. We find ourselves amid the chaotic colour and movement of contemporary artist Madeline Donahue in ‘Dinnertime’, and even drift into 17th-century portraiture in ‘The Cholmondeley Ladies’—identically (stiffly) dressed mothers and their two babies alchemised into two columns of words. Amid these works of art are natural specimens—a slab of the mineral anorthite; a microscope image of a moth wing, which becomes infused with wonder. Elsewhere, ordinary objects, such as a breast pump, become elevated to the level of sculpture, imbued with meaning. Mead is bold in her forms and ever in conversation with the worlds they inhabit. With shades of Mary Oliver, Louise Glück and Bernadette Mayer, Mead’s collection joins their voices in reminding us that nature’s terrifying and awesome power is within us.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Denise Jarrott is an author and writer whose work has appeared in Overland, South Carolina Review, Denver Quarterly and elsewhere. She grew up in Iowa and currently lives in Naarm/Melbourne. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

Category: Reviews