Safety measures against the sea / Katharine Goda

"The pain of a frightened child is carried throughout life, like cracked glass distorting the view of the world. In her first book Safety Measures against the Sea, Katharine Goda is reaching for the buoy in the buffeting sea, ‘these old, old, waves’. She would leave if she could ‘but the doors are far away across a vast and polished, unmapped space’. Her poetry maps that space, the abiding menace in the presence of her father, ‘His hands his hands his hands’, and the questions she never asked her mother. Her poem Yes is composed entirely of Noes. Anger is passed on as ‘vital as sunshine’, the spiral of her descent becomes her ascent, her poetry healing herself in creative battles against blank forms of bureaucracy. While she is losing her words she is finding her words. This is the force of marvellous poetry, exciting, brilliant, highlighting the rocks below for safe passage."-- publishers website