Walking to Mojacar
Di Brandt has surpassed herself in this extraordinary book, which hurls itself upon our desperate environmental, emotional, spiritual condition with fury and eloquence and headlong grace. The sequence "Hymns for Detroit," which sets German hymns the poet heard in her Mennonite farming childhood against "trans(e)lations" for that most damaged city, could make the angels weep. Everywhere, Walking to Mojácar makes us know how far we have gone toward catastrophe, and yet how much passion, imagination, intelligence, and-therefore, perhaps-hope remain. In a prose poem, Brandt asks, "Who knows what this new age will remember of us as it tells its tales and stories to its children?" May these poems be among them.
In Di Brandt's experiments across languages, and in the work of the gifted translators who contribute to these pages, translation is the source of an astonishing poetics, where 'joining procedures' are a principle of invention. This is a book of connections, where cities and languages and poetic forms intermingle. Brandt's lyric voice expands the world, revealing the gaps between languages and memories to be a space where rich dramas unfold.
Sherry Simon
Walking to Mojácar may be heavy, but there are moments where the reader is lifted to a new height of perspective in the capable hands of the poet.
Rose Thuringer, Rhubarb Magazine
Di Brandt demonstrates a variety of poetic styles as well as translations in multiple languages in Walking to Mojacar. This rich collection speaks with an unwavering con¬fidence, with the brash, sometimes sarcastic voice of each poem challenging the reader to discover the multiple worlds that the poet inhabits.
Canadian Literature Spring 2012
Walking to Mojacar "raises a series of key issues around environmental degradation and the loss of affective ties, while leaving space for human creativity and intimacy both in the literary realm and the technological arena.
The Goose Review
Short-listed for the 2011 Mary Scorer Award for Best Book by a Manitoba Publisher
