The Horizon Shifts Sideways
The Horizon Shift Sideways displays an informed curiosity about the natural world and the creatures that inhabit it — both human and animal — and the entanglements and interactions that exist between these. The unique directness of her work is a result of the combination of the scientific and the aesthetic, combined with characteristic clear-eyed observation.
'What a delight these poems are: various, personal; full of incident, observation, visual and tactile sensitivity, intelligent comment. The lines unfold in an easy inevitability which makes one, to quote Thompson, "contemplate your place / in the natural order of things". Irish poet Eavan Boland regards a poem as "a forceful engagement between a life and a language". This rings true for Alison Thompson’s work.' — Brook Emery
Alison Thompson is a poet, short story writer and veterinarian. Born in Melbourne, she had a free-range childhood in the Western District region of Victoria where her parents owned the only general store in a tiny country town that had seven houses, two churches, a school, a grain depot, train station and no pub. After school she moved to Sydney and completed a veterinary science degree at Sydney university. She has spent most of her adult life has been spent in NSW where she still works part-time as a practising veterinarian.
