My latest review for Booksellers New Zealand – James Brown’s Floods Another Chamber. It was a book I enjoyed technically if not emotionally.
This is Brown’s sixth collection. I’ve enjoyed his work before, but this took me until about the third read-through to really start engaging.
I tend to look for myself in poetry, and when I can’t relate, I move on. A lot of this work explores Brown’s own experiences, which isn’t a bad thing. It’s just that as a young (ish), non-athletic (I don’t think I’ve gotten on a bicycle since 2002) woman, I didn’t immediately find a way in. That probably makes me egocentric, an argument furthered by the fact that several of the standout moments for me were in pieces where Brown examines poems, the poet, and the nature of poetry. Here, I was happy to find myself.
