Into the Fold

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

Jacqueline Turner’s first full-length collection of poetry is a
journey through “the worldly, the domestic, the wild” (Barthes)
interspersed with poems that read like journal entries. Turner writes
the spiral and space of a woman’s body, mind, and soul, and she writes
it well.

The collection is divided into two sections. “Into the Fold,”
explores the experience of being “Caught in the fold, the
inbetween.” Each poem explores folds in time, place, experience, and
so forth. One entry links the head injuries of the narrator and her two
children, another rhymes off a list of “ifs” between the narrator
and her sister, and a third explores growing up “playing basketball
… when three girls from the team are pregnant.” The second section,
“Beyond Tongue,” takes the reader on a purely erotic journey. It is
clear not every encounter is sexual, but each is intensely sensual.

Turner is a writer to watch, with poems that are at once personal,
intellectual, domestic, and intellectually playful. Into the Fold would
be an excellent addition to poetry and feminist poetry collections, as
well as to libraries catering to women’s studies.