The poems in Songs that Remind Us of Factories explore how we
remain connected: to the world outside, to our ideas of home, to
each other, and to ourselves. In their searching, these magpie poems
strike a balance between wound language and quiet meditation,
the arched-brow wisecrack and the emotionally frank gesture. The
result is an honest and playful sequence of poems that plumb our
myriad reactions when small wildernesses occasionally come inside.

The book's final section asks whether we may not be too
connected. They mine a world of rapid technological and commercial
growth for its poetic potential, focusing on work in call centres,
postmodern spaces where the walls of dying suburban malls have
been repurposed with "fishnets of fibre-op" and "chain gangs of
chopped desktop/Dells"; where "you're licked/ before the call comes
kicking in."

This is a poetry that refuses to stagnate in one mode, wearing
all manner of poetic hats while always avoiding drab lyrical sentiment.
With a jumpy musicality and a taut line, these poems wander
far, zeroing in on moments of daily connection while also opening
wider their frame of reference to explore the often fractured links
we have to family and loss, science and religion, the idealized rural
and the newly urban.