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Patient Property gathers together sixty-one haiku and tanka about Kirsten Cliff Elliot’s journey through leukaemia. Though at times challenging in their topics, these small poems reward rereading. They are studded throughout with lines and thoughts that can flip readers’ perspectives and heighten awareness of the world in which we live and sometimes suffer.
From the afterword by Patricia Prime The book communicates the awful sense that something important is changing and becoming lost, in poetry which is wrought with the subtlety we expect and love in these concise forms. For a work to become polished and remain natural-seeming is a challenge which faces all writers, and it’s one that Kirsten Cliff Elliot has met with aplomb. This is brave writing, not just because the poet has faced leukaemia and its recovery period but because she has refrained from self-pity, exploring the human emotions invoked by the experiences, and the questions and answers that arise from them. From the foreword by Owen Bullock |
