Reviewed by Beatriz Copello
Slipstream
by Kristyn J. Saunders
Walleah Press
September 2025, Paperback, 120 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1763825963
Kristyn J. Saunders’ Slipstream is both beautiful and unique. It is distinctive for the way the poems are set up, the use of typeface to intensify and emphasise words, the richness of the language, and the delicate beauty of the poems.
The book starts with the following poem which is a perfect opener, setting up one of the key themes in the book – the world of a mother and a daughter:
Each line is the mother’s line.
The mother’s child is in a hospital.
(The difficult world has hurt the child.
The child has hurt herself.
The child is hurt.)
The lines are made
in the child’s slip
stream.
We are taken in with the story of the daughter who has been hurt and is in hospital, but the observations and comments are fully poetic, allowing the reader to experience the sensations of mother and child in the rhythms and sounds of the words. In some of the poems a very discreet sense of humour is hidden. It is interesting to encounter one poem with a bit of history about Psychiatry services and English law about Leucotomy (Lobotomy) and art therapy. It is very difficult to write poetry of this nature, but Saunders does it with precision and dignity, using repetition and sound to creating meaning that conjurs numbness, love, guilt and a kind of dissociation-by-routine, the brain protecting itself by turning experience into pattern.
Life in the hospital is like a parallel life: the family’s “normal” life running besides the medical one, never fully rejoining. The following extract from the poem on page 52 (No title) provides the experience of being in a psychiatric hospital:
Later in the book Saunders again brings history in her poetry like in the poem titled DAX#3, which relates the history of the Dax House which was turned from a Maternity Hospital into a Psychiatric Hospital. Saunders relates the history and issues from the Mental Health Act 1959 up to the DSM-II. It is interesting to note that the poem has a particular shape which also helps to add a layer of meaning that conjures parental guilt and the inevitable self-questioning that come when a child is ill: “Maybe it was my fault that that happened?”, “Maybe I could have prevented …”, “What if I …”. This form of questioning is handled in a very clever and poetic way.
Slipstream is emotional and potent without being melodramatic. The poetry is exceptional, evocative and moving and the fact that it’s a first book of poetry makes this achievement even more impressive.
About the reviewer: Dr Beatriz Copello is an award-winning poet, she writes poetry, fiction, reviews and plays. The author’s books are: Women Souls and Shadows, Meditations At the Edge of a Dream, Under the Gums Long Shade, Forbidden Steps Under the Wisteria, A Call to the Stars translated and published in China and Taiwan, Witches Women and Words, No Salami Fairy Bread, Rambles, Renacer en Azul, Lo Irrevocable del Halcon (In Spanish), and most recently, The Book of Jeremiah, published in December 2024 by Ginninderra Press. Copello’s poetry has been published in literary journals such as Southerly and Australian Women’s Book Review and in many feminist publications. The author has participated in international conferences, has taught Creative Writing at W.S.U. and other scholarly institutions, she has read her poetry at Writers Festivals and other poetry events in Australia and overseas. Copello is mentioned amongst the forty “most notable people” graduated from the University of Technology.