Synopsis "Emergency Window"
Welcome to a science fiction reality of mirrors, windows and menacing simulacra - where nothing is as it seems. In this ambitious and long-awaited second full collection, Sutherland interrogates the language of authenticity, presenting the poet as an anxious, disorientated collaborator trapped in a world of hacked computers and digital avatars. Emergency Window features new poems alongside excerpts from two recent sequences, including a hilarious and strangely prescient version of Little Red Riding Hood, a poem written using Google Streetview, sonnets inspired by the Street Fighter 2 video game, and a sequence of computer-generated translations of classic literature. Surreal, funny, intelligent and experimental, these poems chart a search for meaning in a disintegrating world. Reviews of Emergency Window "lucid observations, smart conceits and insight into the contemporary world as a fragmented, self-constructed thing" Holly Williams, The Independent "The images cohere and expand, making gloriously relevant new ones; the crows rising up in omen as ornate costumes burn is undercut by the pile of singed polyester flares and pink Mia Wallace wigs. Neither image can flatten the other, both floundering in the disconnect between feeling and circumstance." Carmel Doohan, Exeunt Magazine "These poems have a particular beauty, liberated from any notion of original meaning which clears space for new, surprising significance. [... Sutherland's] engagement with the hyper- and sub-real is subtle and enjoyable." Jessica Stacey, The Literateur "playful, energetic and saturated in the environment (if not the values) of late-consumerist society" Steve Spence, Stride Magazine
