Swimming Among the Ruins

Melanie Marttila is a Sudbury-based freelance writer and writing
consultant.

Travel is the frame through which Gillis views life and relationships
this promising debut collection. Each place, statue, or historical
figure becomes the occasion for reflection. Occasionally the tools of
navigation—a compass or map, a path or sign—become poems.

Gillis’s collection is a tool of navigation in itself. She has the
ability to evoke a place with her verse so that even readers who have
never visited the Mediterranean or London can access her sense of these
places. The poet also invites the reader into a relationship. The reader
becomes the “I” observing foreign landscapes, recognizing Gillis’s
“you” as a distinct third party. The reader becomes a tacit partner
in the relationship and relates to the events described or predicted in
each poem. Swimming Among the Ruins is recommended for libraries with
developed poetry collections.