Hive

In Hive, a book-length poem that explores the poetics of the apiary, Suzanne Mercury creates a meadow: a world, a microcosm, a universe which invites the reader into a renewed sense of the world.

"Drawing on Cornelius Agrippa's system of magic squares [Mercury] creates a complexly layered text that encourages multiple ways of reading it. Shot through with wonder and mourning, Hive operates as a divinatory text, by which random combinations of words and lines intersect to create arresting moments of fissured beauty. It is a work of lyric audacity." (Patrick Pritchett)

"Graceful and humane, Mercury's poems draw out connections between living things, the breathing space between humans and honey bees, oaks and constellations, between the body's many-sensed conjoined impressions." (Andrew K Peterson)