We may only be ‘gangs of cells’ but in Christy Ducker’s alert and lyrical poems such physical actualities are only the beginning of a fascinating journey into the mysteries of who we are and what we really amount to. The language of medicine is not used for its novelty but to bring precision and clarity to her vivid investigations of pain, loss and survival. These are poems that can startle and move and in which language brings us to understandings that hold their own alongside those offered by science.
Katharine Towers
Drawing on the science of immunology, Messenger explores how we wound and how we heal. Whether the focus is a tiny molecule or a global problem, Christy Ducker’s succinct poems offer ‘hope and a warning’. Illustrated throughout by Kate Sweeney’s striking photographs, Messenger shuttles between science and art to suggest alternative ways of looking at recovery.
