One needs only look at her name to get a taste of what hides within Amber Dawn’s musings-the words drip off one’s mind like sweet honey! In facile rhymes like ‘skin is always warm somehow I don’t know how,’ and more twisted, brain-bending images of curled scars, charred bodies, and hanging serpents, the poet speaks of decay, love and devotion in terms lyrical, seductive and biblical as the proverbial whore mentioned in the opening piece. ‘Place your hand in front of the sun,’ the poet urges in “Sculpted from Light,” and her words are simple, yet so strong, that I can’t help but respond by turning to my window to see if I can catch a ray of sunlight. Amber Dawn uses a series of quotations from other poets to tie her pieces together, but so powerful is her own vision that she manages to upstage the very people who acted as her inspiration. (Andrée Lachapelle)
Chapbook, 24 pages, Amber Dawn, Mosquito Press, 2055 Nevis Pl., Courtenay, BC, V9N 9V5, www.mosquitopress.com