A Woman by a Well

In these poems, the writer explores the deepest and most mysterious aspects of herself and we, the readers, are assisted in our own self-explorations. The sense of exile from the world and from oneself, which Emily Bilman explores, goes all the way back to that most potent and enduring of myths: the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. Like Edwin Muir, the poet convinces the reader that this expulsion from paradise was not all loss and that exile can deepen human perceptions and can lead to a breathless sense of freedom. In a number of the poems in this collection, one senses a constant striving to cleanse the windows of perception, to see the world with a dazzling clarity as if viewing the everyday world for the very first time. In the words of the Scottish poet, to glimpse the marvellous in the mundane.