Tattoo Land

When Bob Dylan sand of steps goin' down into tattoo land” he might well have been signposting a direct route into the borderlands” that are McCracken's natural home. In her seventh collection, McCracken's interest in exploring marginal lives and obscured voices - as introduced in the 2007 release of Mooncalves - moves into intimate, interior territories that are as much metaphysical as they are physical. With the totemic tattoo - otter, wolf - and the metrics of flight as governing metaphors, these are poems which make shamanic forays into psychic spaces, charting the creative effort to recover and restore deep energies.”

Kathleen McCracken is the author of six collections of poetry, including Bay and College, Blue Light, A Geography of Souls, and Mooncalves.