Fourth Child
Megan Hall
Megan Hall’s first collection of poems, Fourth Child, has the texture of a carefully wrought, hand-stitched garment.
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Fourth Child
Megan Hall’s first collection of poems, Fourth Child, has the texture of a carefully wrought, hand-stitched garment. It is something you want to bury your face in, like the familiar scented fabric of an item of clothing that belonged to a beloved who is gone.
The poems combine a dark humour and terrible grief with a lightness and restrained sensuality. Her language has the qualities of dance: uninhibited and polished, accomplished and vivid.
Fourth Child shows a poet courageously facing deep feelings while being committed to accurate writing, making beautiful and living things out of the fabric of loss, grief, and emptiness.
Megan Hall studied English at the University of Cape Town. She has published her poems in New Coin, New Contrast, Carapace and other journals since 1991. She has also edited both poetry and fiction for New Contrast, taken part in Young Voices (the 2004 South African Online Writers’ Conference hosted by Litnet), and been selected for the 2005 Crossing Borders programme, a British Council-sponsored writer’s mentorship. She works in the publishing industry.
“The poems in Fourth Child steal upon the reader like a leopard. The tone of the volume is unassuming, at times matter-of-fact; it both shields and deepens, and works to control what could easily be runaway emotions. Poems like ‘Dancing on Robben Island’ and ‘Cesaria live’ allow entry into the psychology of icons where they would normally be accompanied by fanfare. It is an intriguing volume, which ensures it will be read again and again.”
Rustum Kozain, This Carting Life, winner of 2006 Ingrid Jonker prize
“Her poems – of love and loss – are at once delicate and powerful. They keep their poise, close to the bone.”
Robin Malan, writer, editor
“Short and poignant with heavy themes of suicide and grief, but also with some lighter themes relating to love.”
Lauren, Goodreads reviewer.
