The poems in Songs that Remind Us of Factories explore how weremain connected: to the world outside, to our ideas of home, toeach other, and to ourselves. In their searching, these magpie poemsstrike a balance between wound language and quiet meditation,the arched-brow wisecrack and the emotionally frank gesture. Theresult is an honest and playful sequence of poems that plumb ourmyriad reactions when small wildernesses occasionally come inside.The book’s final section asks whether we may not be tooconnected. They mine a world of rapid technological and commercialgrowth for its poetic potential, focusing on work in call centres,postmodern spaces where the walls of dying suburban malls havebeen repurposed with “fishnets of fibre-op” and “chain gangs ofchopped desktop/Dells”; where “you’re licked/ before the call comeskicking in.”This is a poetry that refuses to stagnate in one mode, wearingall manner of poetic hats while always avoiding drab lyrical sentiment.With a jumpy musicality and a taut line, these poems wanderfar, zeroing in on moments of daily connection while also openingwider their frame of reference to explore the often fractured linkswe have to family and loss, science and religion, the idealized ruraland the newly urban.