Strange Animals

Strange Animals is collection of experiences - its thread is the author'sjourney from childhood home to settling across an ocean, moving throughthe vagaries of modern love as she travels to new cities and a newfoundmaturity, whilst contemplating the end of youth and what one loses andgains in the process. Throughout these journeys, strange animals appearin the poems, challenging and disrupting both the author's and thereader's experience, asking questions and forcing us to both see and tolook at life in curious new ways.A Canadian grandchild of Dutch and Hungarian immigrants, EmilyVanderploeg explores issues of language, ritual, death and identity inpoems about her family which open the collection in a close intimatespace, which is then ruptured as she and the poems travel to Wales andelsewhere, physically and emotionally, leading us to look at the worldthrough the experiences of animals as people and people as animals,culminating in a sequence of poetry as Tarot - leaving the reader with afortune told, but more questions than answers.