It’s
Your World is divided into short poems which each progress the
action, rather like the work of Steven Herrick. Kristy-Lee Swift experiments
and plays games with language, using rhymed and unrhymed sequences and lots of
puns.
I am not a poet so can’t comment on the quality of the
verse, but I certainly enjoyed reading about Evie, an unhappy fifteen-year-old.
Her mother has died soon after she was born. It’s rumoured that she committed
suicide. Evie has a difficult relationship with her controlling father and
religious grandmother, both of whom think she’s ‘bad’. Evie doesn’t believe she
is evil, just up to no good. Her only hope seems to be to find free-spirited
Aunt Ruth who moved to Sydney and has been out of touch for years.
When her father has a brain haemorrhage, Evie goes to
live with her grandmother. This is worse than prison. She escapes with her
brother, her crush Nigel and her two best friends to celebrate New Year’s Eve. They
get drunk, and she spends the night in the cemetery with a boy who isn’t Nigel.
Evie’s father comes home. Because he has mild brain
damage and is not aware of what is going on, Evie feels she now has a degree of
freedom. She invites friends over, including Nigel. When her father stumbles on
the scene he is furious and physically attacks her.
Evie flees to Sydney and finds there an aunt who
understands and can explain the true circumstances surrounding the death of her
mother. Aunt Ruth offers this comfort: ‘’There’s no such thing as a happy ending.
But there can always be/a happy/keep on going.”
The poems about Evie’s lost mother are deeply moving.
Others are cute, clever and often funny. Though I would have liked one or two more
sequences on Evie and her father when he was recovering, this is an intriguing
read. Evie is a complex, always understandable character. Her confusion,
desires and pain will strike a chord with many adolescent readers.
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