Ceridwen Hall conducts metamorphoses both subtle and, like ice obscured beneath snow dust, perilous in their clarity. In “Visibility,” she writes, “There is nothing exact/ about transformation”, and yet, in these poems exploring a familial history’s myriad, muted turmoil, Hall trains her patient and exacting gaze on the shifting and elusive contours of the self. Lucid and crystalline, Automotive, unnerves and compels with deliberate and unflinching stillness.”
–Paula Mendoza, author of Play for Time
“Automobile already means self-moving” Ceridwen Hall writes. These glass-clear, intimate poems track the mind through memory and lived experience. Filled with precise attention and an elegant understatement, Hall’s poems reward contemplation and unhurried reading. Her poems say in plain language what we have not considered before: “Arrival is also departure” or “Anger is one way / to keep awake, uncertainty another.” Readers will find Hall’s keen perceptions resonant and rewarding.
–Janice Harrington, author of Primitive: The Art and Life of Horace H. Pippin and The Hands of Strangers: Poems from the Nursing Home