Iraklio Poems by Michael Bigelow

Each of Michael Bigelow’s minimalist Iraklio Poemsglide across the page like an icicle, reflecting and refracting the winter sun. Bigelow distills the essence of places into something ghostly where hosts of characters perform their impromptu pirouettes within the backdrop of ancient stages. This careful work whispers, looms, illuminates and obfuscates much like the moon that lights and guides the way through these poems.

While speaking of divinity, desire, loss and love, this slim volume is refreshingly free of unnecessary affectation, bestowing a quiet sense of the holy glimpsed within the mundane. I consider Iraklio Poems in the family of the writing of Robert Lax, the films of Abbas Kiarostami, the hymns of Mirabai, an untouched snowdrift in the moonlight, the smoke of a candle just blown out and — my favourite thing on earth — silence.

— Laura Broadbent, author of In On The Great Jokeand OTYAICSYIIR?