| Waiting for H5N1 |
Jane Routh
ISBN-13 978-1-906285-06-7
PB £4.00
Most of this sequence was written during the period from the first warnings about Avian Influenza to the outbreak of disease in intensive rearing sheds in Norfolk eighteen months later. Paul Farley's recognition of a 'haunted pastoral ..enlarged by its sense of proximity to the here-and-now' in Jane Rouths's poetry is represented here by the brutal incursion of Avian Influenza into the life of a flock of geese and the wild birds nearby.
Acknowledging how fear overtook her delight in birds, the poet bears witness to the politicised nature of 'information' and how its subversive, evasive twists and turns taint us with anything but the truth.