Slowly, As If

Press Karen

In "Slowly, As If", Karen Press looks clear-eyed at what it means to live in a complex society, a fragile world. She celebrates the connectedness that sustains us – in dance, in love, with the natural world, in cities where "strangers seem happy / to let you be" – and sees it betrayed by our unreflecting complicity in poverty and violence. The death of a child who 'barely scratched the air of the country' resonates in her tender, devastating account: "When a child dies, who is responsible?"

"Slowly, As If" asks hard questions with grace and wit, balancing the particular and the universal. "Being told / you're made of stardust / is not helpful / as you sit holding a parking ticket", but it is, none the less, a truth.

About the Author

Karen Press lives in Cape Town. She has published eight poetry collections as well as mathematics textbooks and children's books. Her poetry has appeared in journals in South Africa, Britain, the United States, Australia and Canada, and in translation in French, Italian, Turkish and Tamil. She co-founded the publishing collective Buchu Books and currently works as a freelance editor and writer.

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