Every Little Sound [Paperback]

Drawing from neuroscience on the idea of 'internal gain', an internal volume control which helps us amplify and focus on quiet sounds in times of threat, danger or intense concentration, Ruby Robinson's brilliant debut introduces a poet whose work is governed by a scrupulous attention to the detail of the contemporary world. Moving and original, her poems invite us to listen carefully, and use ideas of hearing and listening to explore the legacies of trauma. The book celebrates the separateness and connectedness of human experience in relationships, and our capacity to harm and love.

Reader, listener,
Unlocatable
Longbefore
Hope
Undress
Listen
Story
Truth
Locked Doors
My Mother
Apology
Interlude
Tea
Time
Romance
Boy
This Night
Orgasm
Schism
Watching TV
Internal Gain
Breathe Deep
Hush
Love
Love II
Flashback
How to Catch a Pebble
Winter
Past
Talisker Bay
Tuning Fork
To my Family

Notes and Acknowledgements

Robinson is concerned with 'the gaps between - when sets are dismantled and rebuilt, or a tortoise hibernates while all human life continues around it. In poems that pulse with sensory detail - the sun pushing through iced air, a horizon 'enflaming' the shallows at the water's edge - her poetry amplifies the quietest, habitually unheard, sounds of our lives. There is a metaphysical sensibility - at work in poems like the wonderful 'Undress' - a modern take on the resistant lover trope, but with a delicious twist: while Donne and Marvell stop short of a resolution, Robinson's fictional lover is marvellously yielding. Her crisp phrasing and relentless reaching after the truth make hers a rare and powerful new voice. Ruby Robinson is one to watch. - Julia Copus