Letters from the Doll Hospital

Gemma Files is a Toronto-based freelance writer.

Surrealism is always hard to achieve, especially on paper, but Linda
Rogers pulls it off. Her poems are unashamedly self-referential (but
never exclusive) and full of a raw sensuality that manifests itself in
increasingly disturbing forms: “My daughter sleeps under the ice, /
her eyes and fingernails / transparent, / her bridal opening filled /
with curious fish.” (“Our women were nervous,” she comments in
another poem. “They ran up some curtains / and washed the walls and
the floors. / They sewed my lips and my pockets, / the garrulous / song
between my legs.”) Naked, hallucinatory oddity is this poet’s
stock-in-trade, but she never makes it feel calculated.