‘Poetry of witness can come from other than battlefield trenches, blood and bombs. Katherine Seppings’ chapbook begins with horrific climate, both a heatwave and a firestorm … The poems move on, taking in more of the animal world (sheep in “Animal Liberation”, 8-9) and geographical space (“Avebury”, 11).
“Seville” brings people back into the equation (the kindness of strangers, when “All I could say was ‘gracias’”, 12) , followed by “Boat People” (“Who would come in a boat to these shores / girt by shark nets?”, 13).
By these two poems, presented one after the other, we are reminded that poetry of witness is a poetry of tension and of intolerable contrasts, not only wet versus dry but also what we pretend versus what we do:’
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