Two Tongues

Slip-ups, skirmishes, and the sidelong glance characterise Claudine Toutoungi's Two Tongues, a surreal and startling second collection that takes on the dislocations and double takes of modern life and weaves from them poems of wit, grit, and delicious abandon. In a landscape populated by levitating snailfish, sotto voce therapists, melancholic kittiwakes, and collapsing stage sets, boundaries blur, languages merge, vision is partial, and identity nothing but fluid. Misdirected medical reminders