Bøger af Merlinda Bobis

Is it the sun a hole sucking in a bird or Icarus about to singe the sun? Which composes which? The poet asks as she circumnavigates the globe, history, and an inner universe. When it responds, there's the small shudder, the sprawl of a spin, or the quiet before and after a full circle. The eyes catch a black bird close to an eerie sun. Instantly, a poem: an accident of composition. Or a tree, rock, light from a story heard, dreamt, read or remembered returns as if it were the only tree, rock, light in the planet. The poet is caught, returned to her first heart: poetry. After four novels, Merlinda offers poems from the stillness of contemplation to the spinning of tales, then to passage across different histories. Glass becomes eternal greens underwater, fish gossip about colonisation, a gumnut turns dissident, and the dreams of Captain Cook and Pigafetta circumnavigate the globe leaving a trail of blood, beads, and the scent of cloves. But in between, the poet hopes: ‘there could be accidents / of kindness here.'

In 1987, the Philippine government fights a total war against communist insurgency and the village of Iraya is militarized. The days are violent and the nights heavy with fireflies in the river where the dead are dumped. With her 12-meter hair, the "e;fish-hair woman"e; Estrella trawls the corpses from the water, which now tastes of lemongrass. She falls in love with the visiting Australian writer Tony McIntyre before he disappears in the conflict. Ten years later, his son Luke is reading this story in a mysterious manuscript sent to Australia with love letters. Tony left Australia when Luke was six, and now at 19 Luke is traveling to the Philippines because his father is supposedly dying. On arrival he is caught in a web of betrayal that spins into the dark, magical tale of the manuscript as fact bleeds into fiction. Luke meets Stella, who could be Tony's lover-or the fish-hair woman-but Tony cannot be found. Poetic and eclectic in style, this epic tale threads a multitude of voices and stories worldwide and ignites a mystery of who is really telling the story.

An anomalous kiss. A white turtle ferrying the dreams of the dead. A working siesta in a five-star hotel. A woman's twelve-metre hair trawling corpses from a river. Or a queue of longings in Darlinghurst. These enigmatic tales are stories of chance and hope. Alternately mythic, wistful or quirky, Merlinda Bobis' tales resonate with an original and confident storytelling voice. Published as The Kissing in the United States.