AustLit

'Lisa Jacobson is a Melbourne poet and social worker. In the chapbook The Asylum Poems, she attempts to empathetically inhabit the experiences of an Iraqi family fleeing persecution. Her images are often beautiful, like ‘uncle-blood falling in rays’ and ‘families scatter like music’. The prettiness of the language is a curious choice, though, given the raw horror of the subject matter. Closely observed grotesque details, like the father yelling ‘Towels! ’ as he carries his bleeding brother over the threshold of their Iraqi home, are among the sequence’s most satisfying moments.' (Introduction)