Out There. "Text Thing" and "Dear Deliria: New and Selected Poems" by Pam Brown. [review]

Abstract

It is a Pam Brown moment when, flicking through her "Dear Deliria", McCooey reads of 'historic butter sculptures' and hears at the same time David Bowie on the stereo singing 'yak-butter statues'. It's a Pam Brown moment because her poetry is one of incidents and coincidence. In its interest in both the quotidian and in critique, Brown's poetry illustrates the endless interplay between texts and contexts, between art and life. These latter categories are most vivid in Brown's poems when they are collapsing into each other - like drunk friends at a party.