Linda Black’s Interior investigates what it means to be a person. The poems interrogate the ways in which we manufacture an identity for ourselves through our interpretation of events, relationships and memories, not least through the creation of art. They navigate the age-old question – who exactly is the ‘I’ that is doing the interpreting? Poignantly, they explore how our view of ourselves changes, fragments and grows unruly as we become older. One thread in these poems is the fear of losing memory altogether: however unreliable memory can be, it is all we have to maintain our sense of an ‘I’. Yet at some point in our lives, how can we avoid having our ‘head / blown’ like ‘dandelions’ (‘Something needs divining’)?

The opening poem, ‘Here I embark on the difficult task of creating a person’, sets the Cartesian tone for the rest of the book:

I have begun to examine ‘her’ mental state, her limited sense of reality, having existed thus far in her own head. Such inward focus blights her eyesight, condenses memory, maims concentration. How to become (more) real? Take her out of herself. No wonder she forgets the plot, the places she hasn’t been.

All is not lost. The possibility of understanding and creating a life, both while living it and looking back, comes from making art (another process which Black examines and takes to task). For this, the artist must be open, ‘without preparation’, even if this may involve a ‘scrabble for pieces I no longer recognise’ (‘I present myself’). As ...