Book excerpt: A powerful first collection of poems which bear witness to difficult lives in Latin America, in the mining towns of the USA, in prairie families ruined by hardship and losses and incest. Pamela Porter's poetry has both gravitas and grace, it speaks about important matters beyond the personal and domestic concerns of the writer herself, yet many of the poems fall within the personal narrative tradition. These poems are earthy and metaphysical, personal and universal, geographically and historically diverse. The details are beautifully, often hauntingly, realized. Porter keeps her own sense of outrage in check, creating startling and invasive images and refusing to trespass by bludgeoning or imposing a response on the reader. There's an undercurrent of hope, of confidence in individuals' capacity to survive and make meaningful lives in the wake of tragedy. We come to the end of the book disturbed, deeply stirred, but not devastated.