Baby Schema

A Poetry Book Society Spring Recommendation 2024‘ Trees crawling with babies, babiesdarting through the skyor buoyed by thermal vents, babiespainted with false eyes’ (‘ Fable’ )In Isabel Galleymore’ s second collection, the adorable other is not just an imagined future child, but also a tree frog, a weather-worn statue and often the speaker herself, who dreams of quitting adulthood and an endangered world. ‘ Mother Earth’ is less an entity to be revered than a command to care-giving. Lyrics and syllabically-constrained fables examine the play and power involved in creating new life, whether biologically or via cartoonists’ animation.Galleymore hones in on cuteness and its relationships to hyper-capitalism and environmental crisis to produce a deliberately queasy ecopoetics. Animal extinctions are likened to failed businesses and sainthood is granted to a dubious character named Michael Mouse. Studies of wild creatures join those of pets, pot plants and animal videos: here is a new nature – one shaped by the extremes of our contemporary desires.