I am not a huge poetry reader, but Siobhan is very near and dear to my heart as she was my supervisor throughout my masters, as well as my undergrad lecturer from Creative Writing. A lot of what I know came from her, so to have a copy of her 2021 collection Ghosts to read and reflect on is a wonderful thing. I have only just read it, not wanting to feel disengaged or distant from the poetic form, and now I wish I had read it far sooner.

Ghosts is about many things; Otago University Press, the publishers, describe it as a collection about ‘migration, outcasts, the search for home, and the ghosts we live with, including the ones who occupy our memories, ancestries and stories.’ I feel it is more than that, but I don’t want to spoil it for those keen to read it. These themes, while pertinent to the poems and overarching ideas of the collection, as not all that is brought out in the words and phrases within the covers.

Reading Ghosts will have you opening your mind and heart up to feelings and thoughts that are not yours to start with, but you find a home for them in the end. Histories and experiences brought to the page through Siobhan’s expert pen become ingrained in you the more you read, absorb, and consider the collection. The themes and ideas living in these pages are not fixed to a time and place, rather they happen all around us, at all points in time, and perhaps most haunting of all, they never go away.

This collection will not leave your conscious for a great many months, if you are lucky. It is harrowing and vivid and drums up a voice that cannot be so easily snuffed out. It is a collection of unification, shared stories and shared experiences, and it has the power to burrow down and find a place to live in your mind. In a way, a reader picking up this poetry collection gives a home to the displaced, for you will know them and remember them long after the back cover has closed.

I cannot comment on the poetic structure and musicality as poetry is a subjective medium, much like prose and genre are, and I am not well-versed with many poets works. Poetry is one of those things I sometimes struggle to grab hold of and let sink in. I can simply say that the structure did not dissuade me from continuing, the motifs and recurring imagery felt meaningful, powerful, and well placed. The language flows where the poetic structure gives shape, moulding an idea that serves in any medium. The themes and voices within this collection stand strong, transcending the written form to call out, rise up, and be heard.

Even if you are not a big poetry fan, I recommend giving Ghosts a chance. If you are a poetry reading, or even literary fiction and poetic prose readers, I recommend picking up Ghosts. It isn’t a collection restricted to the autumnal season, as I hope you will find out. It is a collection that can be read any time of the year, in any location, so I hope many of you will give Siobhan’s work a go. You may find yourself a new favourite poet in doing so, and I am happy to say this is not her only collection published – there are many more stories she has penned.