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Madame Sasoo Goes Bathing

Madame Sasoo Goes Bathing is a collection of poetry loosely set on Mauritius. The island is part real, part mythological, part psycho-geographical. In the tradition of Gauguin on Tahiti, the île paradisiaque is threatened from within as a beast from Antarctica is washed up on the shore. The beast is presented as unrecognisable but familiar, a composite creature out of a Francis Bacon nightmare, a product of the upending of nature that is climate change. “At Gris-Gris” is the central focus, a sequence of seven cantos, each containing nine couplets. Research challenges include “shooting” the creature from different angles, designed to highlight its ambiguity; in each the creature is alive, then dead, dragging itself to safety, then blasted through the head with a rifle. How should each “frame” represent a different view-point on global warming? Other poems attempt to evoke the optical effects of the Southern hemisphere through homophonic techniques, rhyme and assonance seen as parallel to the intensity of tropical colour. Research practice included looking at Gauguin his use of Tahitian light and other parallels in the science and physics of colour, as well as repeated visits to Mauritius and detailed examination of a problematic Anglo-Mauritian marriage, seen at close range.