Laura Walker

Swarm Lure is composed of three sections: the first incorporates quotations from James Joyce’s Ulysses and translations of unreadable marginalia discovered in a used copy of that same novel; the second section is a series of iterations of a poem derived from texts generated through online translation machines; the third section is composed of short poems inspired by English and Italian beekeeping terms. Although I am fascinated by Walker’s multilingual translation process in the poems of the second section, I find the poems in the first section to be the most satisfying. Although in Walker’s poetry nothing is pinned down, in reading the first series of poems I have the impression that I am experiencing one long steamy summer of girlhood. A girl speaks and a girl (or woman) who seems to be her sister or intimate friend is spoken to. In their world, “a pier drops sharply into its own reflection” and there are “inevitable trains and their long backs.” Beekeeping with its opposite qualities of smokiness and sweetness provides an apt frame for the poems of Swarm Lure. For these are poems of ambiance and weather rather than of sense. Walker gathers language into her poems in expectation of its sweetness (and its savor) just as the Medieval beekeepers depicted in the book’s cover art collect honey from their hives.
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