Published Works

Until It Rains

‘Running through the assured and enthralling poems of this debut chapbook, Until It Rains, is Hilary Stobbs’ ability to make seeing happen in different shades of light: ‘pale light’, ‘moonlight’, ‘slate light’, ‘early light’. Each concise poem enables the reader to see more clearly / more sharply; then the poet takes seeing to another level in ‘Woman Through Binoculars’. In this poem, seeing becomes intrusive and unsettling as the woman viewed through the use of binoculars does not know that she is being watched; she does not know that someone is witnessing her private moment of pain and recording it in words. Unlike the temporary nature of ‘snails’ recording the speaker’s ‘tracks, in corridors / until it rains’ (‘Never Again’), ‘Women Through Binoculars’ refuses erasure and lingers in the memory long after it has been read. Furthermore, it compels the reader to ask the question: What are the rules of seeing?'

Olive M. Ritch

Available from www.greyhenpress.com/hen-run/