Elsewhere: An Elergy

Faisal Mohyuddin
Paperback, 56 pages
9781736672150

Elsewhere: An Elegy meditates on the complexities of loss, on how private and everlasting the weight of grief can be. Moving between short fragmented “answers” to the same lingering question, deconstructed haibun, and dream sequences, the speaker in Elsewhere: An Elegy cannot but help see himself as his own father, and his infant son as his own young self. He admits, “I’ve still not divined / how to unhusk this steadfast / grief from my poems.” Ultimately, he comes to recognise that the most healing way to grieve is to give, is to translate loss into generosity, pain into poetry.