As Though the Wound Had HeardMara Pastor 'Words rarely fail us. Rather, its often the other way around. A poem like Mara Pastors Man reminds me of how much we undercut and burden them with the task of unidirectional sense making. It lodges in my mindparasitic, tapeworm likefor its odd humor, unsettling ambiguity, and refusal to budge. The Busts of Mart is a comedic take on polyvocality. Mara Jos Gimnezs translations capture the quirks of Pastors playful sensibility, and what

translated by the author

The Winter Garden Photograph began as an homage to a magazine

in balans met zichzelf

the publication is populated with a cadre of colorful characters

the solitary mother and the insurgent multitude

and it erodes borders between the poet's mouth and the river's

’ aldus de jury van de Anna Bijns Prijs in 1995

writing out of giving or generosity

how to dream

creates new visions out of the original at times but always captures its incantatory rhythm and beauty and starfulness

At the centre of the book is an inquiry into our perennial obsession with female victims

Previous poems have been published in The Chicago Review