Book Review: Breath by Elizabeth 'Lish' Skec

All musicians know the importance of breath. It is what determines the beauty of the phrase and conveys the meaning of the composer’s syntax. From saxophone players, who conjure up improvisations on the length of a breath, to choral singers, who know a wrongly-placed breath is by no means silent.

Didgeridoo players are skilled in circular breathing, where the inhalation and the exhalation happen simultaneously. As a musician and poet, Lish has mastered this skill in her book Breath. The reader feels the gasping, crushing breath of anxiety along with Lish in the face of serious illness, but just as quickly exhales to the beauty of her turn of phrase. It’s akin to planting your feet in the soft grass and soil after running across sharp stones. Lish offers the grit of life but also hands us the reprieve.

Almost punk in her approach, Lish calls a spade a spade, with none of the pretense and obfuscation that poets often pretend is needed to call something poetry. Lish’s poems are hard- hitting tales wrapped up in her unique rhythmic cadence so recognisable when she reads live. At times the poems are deceptively simplistic and succinct, but isn’t that true of any talented musician’s work? It seems effortless; we don’t see the inner workings of the lungs.

When poets are regulars on the pub and performance poetry scene, often there is a disconnect when it comes to translating the poems to page. Lish however, lets the rhythm and story dictate the form and thankfully hasn’t edited out her signature brand of down-to-earth humour (Mum’s breast):

‘what are you doing mum’

oh chook,

that was Maria on the phone

her tit just melted on the heater

I’m not letting that happen to mine

At times, Lish has avoided sentimentality (Flowers are a waste of money) and old-fashioned romanticism is replaced with earthy desires (Don’t forget):

I wanna love ya

till I’m

old ‘n’ sore

sit on a stump

in a cow paddock

with the next generation

I gotta love ya…

A story teller at heart, Lish brings her anecdotes to life as we watch her character’s narratives unfold. In I can treat myself, the narrator delays intervening in a situation with a friend Ginko, who has been bitten by a funnel web spider, believing he can cure himself with home-taught Chinese remedies. She has lived a rich life with travels across Australia and as a reader you are immersed in stories from an array of colourful and absurd characters. But it is all circular, as we journey through the Australian setting to rest in the bosom of family and kinship. Then, on the last note, like a master class in composition, we are left in suspension, with the last word omitted and the realisation that one day, the rhythm of this life, this breath will cease.

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