Tight Bindings
With unflinching honesty and lyrical precision, Tight Bindings grapples with embodied experiences and moments of transition. Birth, death, sex, illness, desire, and motherhood are all brought into conversation with the stories we tell and the secrets we keep. The poems trace a journey of self-discovery through confession, transformation, and a suite of reclaimed fairy tales. This debut collection sings us into story, into a place of inseparable darkness and light. It is for anyone who has yearned to break free.
'Sonically brilliant, tender, and gutsy, Sarah’s poems are born of razor-sharp social awareness.' — Esther Ottaway
'Temporal’s poems rewrite the fairy tales with a deft sleight of hand. Under it all, rocklike, she conjures vibrant journeys, the magic potion of memory, bodies in love and the inexplicable impetus to carry on.' — Kerri Shying
'Tight Bindings may be the most complete and organic interpretation of femininity I’ve ever encountered, and it will guide me for years to come. It reads like a love letter to all of us who have ever been daughters, and presents a powerful re-integration of those experiences outside the confines of gendered narratives.' — Es Foong
Sarah Temporal is a prize-winning poet living on Bundjalung lands in the NSW Northern Rivers. Her writing is concerned with revealing our hidden selves, and ranges from personal confessions to reclaimed fairy tales. Her work has been anthologised in Best of Australian Poems, Heroines Anthology, Australian Poetry Anthology and more, and was shortlisted for the Val Vallis Award. With a background in education, she has taught poetry to hundreds of people from ages 8 to 89, and now runs a regional arts initiative (Poets Out Loud) to empower voices of all ages. Arriving after twenty years of performing live, Tight Bindings is her first published collection.
