Debbie Lim, Beastly Eye

The notion of gaze – both animal and human – threads through the poems in ‘Beastly Eye’. These are quietly intense lyrics in which attentiveness to the natural world unsettles with details that are often both beautiful and strange. Whether it is the reflection in a cat’s eye, a portrait of the elusive vampire squid, or the haunting plaster casts of Pompeii, central to these poems is the way controlled image opens into larger meditations on mortality and what it is to be a creature of this world.

Debbie Lim lives in Sydney. Her poems have appeared in numerous Australian journals and anthologies, including The Best Australian Poems 2009, 2010 and 2011 (Black Inc.),  The Newcastle Poetry Prize Anthology (2009, HWC) and Poetry Without Borders (Picaro Press). Her awards include the Rosemary Dobson Prize (2009), the Inverawe Nature Poetry Prize (2008 and 2010), and the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize (2008 and 2010). Beastly Eye is her first collection.