Gabeba Baderoon, The Dream in the Next Body

I first encountered Gabeba Baderoon at the 2008 African Literature Association Conference in Macomb, Illinois of all places. She was completely new to me: as a poet, a critic, a commentator. But she captivated at a roundtable I attended and I picked up what was on offer at a reading later that night: The Dream in the Next Body.

I wasn't disappointed. She's a skilled poet and, for the record, a marvelous reader. Her voice blends wonderfully with her verse, and it's hard not to hear her reading to you as you read her lines.

It's a strong collection, but uneven. Let me quote one poem in it's entirety:

To come to this country,
my body must assemble itself

into photographs and signatures.
Among them they will search of me.

I must leave behind all uncertainties.
I cannot myself be a question.

"I Cannot Myself" (23)

Those first three lines, I think, are masterful. There's a distancing Baderoon creates with the use of "my body" that is telling. And yet abandoned in the denouement. It feels too... pat? too neat? Or just that she hasn't bridged that distance? It just breaks down at the turn.

If there is a weakness to the collection as a whole it's that -- taken in one sitting -- the poetry eventually comes to feel like so many set-pieces. There are no punchlines, these aren't gags, and she's not trying out various dramatic effects. But in aggregate I felt like I had just wandered among museum boxes or walked through a hall of dioramas. They were lovely. And evocative. But there was also something consciously-constructed and distant about them.

I do look forward to reading more of her work; and, with luck, hearing her read live again. There is a way in through her voice, perhaps, that I was missing on the page.