Dust Sucker is a remarkable new book-length poem by writer and translator Jen Calleja. Clear-eyed, expansive, and intoxicating, this exhilarating work deftly blurs disparate themes including time and mortality, communication and translation, intimacy and infertility. Presented as a deluxe bilingual bookwork, this 'contemplation of dust' explores the pollution of our environment - both at home and in nature - and the shoring of mental detritus.
With unquestionable poignancy and flashes of sardonic wit, Calleja excavates her English-Irish-Maltese heritage, inherited anxieties, and ambivalence towards childlessness during climate crisis. Ultimately, Dust Sucker is triumphant proof that even when feeling dusty with despair, there exists a compulsion to find other means to traverse and communicate experience. This edition includes a German translation by award-winning Austrian poet Carolina Schutti; a companionable doppelganger befitting of a poem that finds connection across languages and in translation.
