Chords of Inquiry

Anna Loughran

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In Chords of Inquiry, Anna Loughran interrogates questions of gender and identity with a lightness of touch and a remarkably imaginative and tender approach to phrase and language. These are poems of ‘potbellied’ vases and ‘the viability of cushions’; poems that show a mastery of scansion and a delight in capturing the beauty and complexity of the self.

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In Anna Loughran's lovely pamphlet, we catch the language of metamorphosis - a shimmering dance of forms that explore what language can reveal and what it hides; how it both can mask us and reveal our inner truths, especially as regards our gendered bodies. And what if the disguise is the truth? What happens when what we are is also a performance and a wish? How then do we map our desire? Loughran studies the complex states of reading and being read with limber, supple lines, with mermaid glitter. Hers is a striking voice I'm looking forward to hearing more from. - Tess Taylor

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With this ringing resonance, the poet invests a critical importance onto ‘examination’, in finding a grain or two within the specific, turning inward. - Mícheál McCann

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Anna Loughran lives in Belfast and is currently working toward an MA in Poetry at Queen's University. Her work has appeared in The Tangerine and the 'Hour by Hour' edition of the Poetry Jukebox.