Hearing Eye

No. 58 in the Torriano Poetry Pamphlet Series.
A Small Gateway (Hearing Eye, 2009) is written from the perspective of a second generation immigrant from the Jewish East End. It addresses the scars of history and displacement in shaping personal and collective identity, memory and art.

It is enough
to have half a line
or a small gap in the world
through which, at any moment,
light may come.

thought-provoking and unafraid to tackle important themes in engaging ways

In its early poems, she weighs up cultural origins, with Mama Loschen (meaning ‘mother tongue’) considering “the ferment and germination of our words”, a mixture that permeates the whole book; and her well-drawn sketches of a London Jewish childhood are shot through with snatches of Yiddish, making them all the more satisfying to read aloud.