Michele Seminara reviews The Special by David Stavanger

The Special

by David Stavanger

University of Queensland Press

ISBN 978-0-7022-5319-5

Reviewed by MICHELE SEMINARA

This book is dedicated to the dead
who are bravely living
(and to those who wake wild-eyed in the dark)

So begins David Stavanger’s first full length collection, The Special, published by UQP as wining manuscript of the 2013 Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize. As the dedication suggests, this book is an unsettling read; one feels, intentionally so. The poems deal with what is dark and broken in the human psyche, informed, presumably, by the poet’s own personal and professional experiences with mental illness. 

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