Melanie Cameron

Holding the Dark Melanie Cameron

In Cameron's evocative opening poem, a young woman, temporarily deprived of her eyesight, pushes herself deep into inner space, letting the darkness unfold around her until the "boundaries of skin" dissolve and personal identity is fractured "like a galaxy into constellations." The poems that follow explore what can happen when you dare to "keep your eyes open in the dark." They touch on violence, mortality, and mourning. But they also open the space of darkness to reveal its potential for intimacy, its rich eroticism, and its promise of liberation in a world without visual boundaries. Combining the intensity of the lyric with the scope of the long poem, Holding the Dark invites us to rethink our conventional concepts of darkness and enter the sensuous night.