Local Interest

Emily Hasler's second collection, "Local Interest," explores the constantly shifting courses of rivers and lives, documenting the dailiness of disaster and the hybrid language of poetry. It explores boundaries and belonging, questioning ideas of invasion and migration, and celebrating dwelling while looking beyond permanence and ownership.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 72 pages
Publication date: 01 April 2023
Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Where salt and freshwater converge, where floods and fields intertwine, Emily Hasler's second collection unveils the everyday reality of disaster, tracing the ever-evolving paths of rivers and lives. Drawing inspiration from the sections of libraries where her research began, Local Interest explores the fragile and treacherous landscapes of south Suffolk and north Essex: estuaries, water meadows, coastal defenses, and abandoned decoys. This is a book of lost, created, and threatened habitats, teeming with plants, people, animals, and the invisible life that inhabits them. Here, promontories emerge, precarity looms, and potential abounds. The first English sea battle, a forgotten stuntman, rare and familiar birds, a fish die-off, and a vanished world intertwine with moments and millennia, as muddled as the elements themselves. In these poems, nothing is pure, and everything is borrowed. Language blends seamlessly, with poems being both "stolen" and "observed."

Local Interest delves into the boundaries of identity and belonging, casting a discerning eye on notions of invasion and migration, borders, and crossings. It poses the question of what constitutes "local" and to whom it belongs. It encourages us to celebrate dwelling while also exploring the transience of permanence and ownership. This is poetry that immerses itself in the muddy depths of things, inviting you to follow it through every breach that has been and could be.

Dimension: 189 x 118 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781802078145