Otopos

by Dominique Hecq

"Otopos unfurls a paradox: the interleaving and entangling of self and topos."

In rhythms and tones that feel chromatic and at other times symphonic, the poems of Otopos compose the layered language of one at home, yet out of place, in her adopted, wondrous, and ravaged land. In this topography imbued “with flesh and soul,” the imagination shimmers and memory shapes itself as prayer. Dominique Hecq’s voice is that of the shifting creek, reveling in the splendor of a land in which everything is alive, facing down its senseless violence, and witnessing what yearns and sometimes yields to the “music of the heart.” These poems—generative, vibrant, and necessary—are an intimate embrace of the topographic world within us.

—William O'Daly, Author of The New Gods

This remarkable book takes the reader along the vulnerable parklands of the Merri Creek trail through the inner North of Melbourne—and along the way evokes the bird life, gives uncanny voice to the river gums, recounts horrific assaults on women, turns to the hopeful life of the kingfisher, lingers on the words of local indigenous languages, and even finds love. All along this powerfully imagined pathway we ride with the wit, the music, the restlessly allusive and associative mind of a poet who both writes herself out of the poem and brings to it a lifetime of thought and reading and feeling. This work is a tour de force.

—Emeritus Professor Kevin Brophy, AM, author of Look at the Lake

Otopos is a rounding out of language, a multi-layered topography map of humans and places, of the natural world and culture-driven cruelties. As stunning for its gentleness as its sharpness, people and spaces that soothe—and those that cause great harm. Hecq does not shy away from the vicious, misogynistic violence that occurred at Merri Creek in Melbourne, Australia. She also reminds us of our connection to each other and to nature. Fervent and with love.

—Karen Poppy, author of Diving at the Lip of the Water