AustLit

'Bonny Cassidy’s Chatelaine is a gift to a reviewer that doesn’t want to paraphrase poems, for a reader that doesn’t need such summarising. Rather, its line-up of loosely framed lyrics offers opportunities for thinking and (re)reading. Cassidy’s figure of the chatelaine, or key-keeper, lives, or moves, somewhere in between the reader and the poet. There are keys being kept but they are not in a predetermined place, nor, I suspect, are there any predetermined keyholes either. Whether or not this seems like hedge-betting will reflect your idea of what literature is for, or what it does.' (Introduction)