Small Theatres

<p>The world’s / face like a / picture plane. / Its space / offered to the / eye as a / colour might be.<br><br>In these poems, everyday occurrences – an imprint in grass, crumbs in a wrapper, the sound of a thermostat engaging – are opportunities for thinking through close attention. <i>Small Theatres </i>is the latest instalment in Mark Truscott’s exploration of our perceptions and feelings of separation from the world around us.<br><br>Truscott has mobilized the materiality of language, pushing it into territories of its own failure. These poems find a haunting, opaque song, as they shift theme and method toward time-based disciplines such as music and drama. <i>Small Theatres</i> looks for meaning in an increasingly meaningless world where simultaneous scarcity and excessive availability are products of mechanisms seemingly beyond our grasp. Marshalling minimalist and objectivist techniques and a relentless attention to the fissures running through each thought and every moment of our lives, these poems give shape to a reality constantly on the verge of collapse.<br><br>Composed at home in the quiet of early morning, <i>Small Theatres </i>evokes practices of solitude, domesticity, and sober attentiveness to the seemingly insignificant.</p>