Between grief and relief, Francesca Bell’s poems don’t pause, they flow – like a warm bath, and someone quietly bringing a candle; then a cold shower, and the body awakened to spring.
In What Small Sound, Bell’s second book, we are placed among bruised words, in a world that makes us feel, that shows the effort required to deal with the possibility of healing, a world where we need to stay alert.
There are no pauses, true, but we sense the cadence of spaces between verses, words measured to allow the reader to breathe, and purposeful guidance through the path that suffering traces.