we are mere players
in a pantomime, performing parts
which must stay true to narrative alone;
right now, this means weeping salt
into a chilli stew to the sound of the sea –
that enormous story, consistent and unfathomed,
repeating outside in the dark, endlessly.
I write into questions of discomfort, tracking an image until the poem reveals a partial answer.
— Dawn Garisch
“They are poems to break hearts, and mend them again. And I swear I heard the sound of the potter’s wheel turning in The Sound in Stone.”
— Jacques Coetzee
ISBN: 978-1-990992-57-5
Also available on Kindle: Disturbance by Dawn Garisch
Publication date: December 2020
About the author:
DAWN GARISCH Dawn Garisch is the highly acclaimed author of a non-fiction work, a memoir and seven novels, three of which were published in the UK. Her latest, Breaking Milk, was published by Karavan Press in 2019. She has written for television and has had five of her plays and a short film produced.
Her poem Blood Delta won the DALRO Prize in 2007 for best poem, and Miracle won the EU Sol Plaatje Poetry Award in 2011. Difficult Gifts, her debut poetry collection, was published the same year. She also writes short stories and her What to Do About Ricky won the Short.Sharp.Story competition in 2013.
Dawn’s novel Trespass was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in Africa in 2010, and Accident was longlisted for the Barry Ronge Sunday Times Fiction Prize in 2018. She is part of the medical humanities movement and a founding member of the Life Righting Collective where she runs courses in memoir writing. Dawn is also a practising medical doctor and lives in Cape Town.
Disturbance, published by Karavan Press, is her second poetry collection.
Author photograph by AJ Wattamaniuk.
karavanpress.com 