Fair’s Fair, Susan Utting’s third full poetry collection has been described as `joyous, heartbreaking, ramm’d with life’. In these poems dead creatures (a stuffed bird, a taxidermist’s zebra) and people (a lovable, garrulous old man, a strange, moon-faced woman) come back to life. The graveyard dead join in the partying and after-hours drinking in the village pub; a lament becomes a celebration of life.
Full of desires and ambitions – some fulfilled, some thwarted, from learning to read to reaching the moon, from shape-shifting to living without mirrors – poems are paired to speak to, or reflect each other. Themes and stories chain-react and echo throughout the book in Utting’s trademark rich vocabulary, strong rhythms and distinctive patterns of sound. Fair’s Fair continues to fulfil Adrian Mitchell’s description of Susan Utting’s work: `Her poems are musical, magical and have a clarity which goes straight to the heart.’