Difficult Gifts

"There is a balance of emotion and craft in Dawn Garisch’s poetry, a seamless welding of raw experience and selfobservation, of music and thought. She writes the most personal spaces, always lit by her wry, focused understanding."

"Dawn’s poems reveal a warm, keen eye for the intricacies, delicacies and difficulties of language and love."

'The motif of the body is central to Garisch’s work; it changes – it can leave. It is also a place of sustenance, and offers the possibility of transcending grief. The images stay with me: the pungent eroticism in the poem ‘The Proper Use of Flowers’, or love encountered as a “trout that breathes polluted water”.'