The modern mind is no longer asked to remember. As Google swallows information, repackages and archives it, the need for memory shrinks; it becomes far more important to know where and how to find a fact than to retain that same fact. Therefore the act of reading becomes analogous to the search function in a web browser — type in what’s needed, consume and move on. In this way, the book is in danger of becoming a museum, a static, indexed object, complete and finite; the book as a clear and identifiable set of facts, a space to be entered and left, all without leaving a trace.

At the centre of Kate Eichhorn’s Fond is the question of how the modern person consumes and stores information. This is a book about archives and archiving, less a description and more a readerly call to arms. To this end, Fond creates a kinetic and amorphous text that is steeped in process. The poems move around the page, hiding in the corners, emerging hand-edited in the middle, jammed to the left or right. The reader cannot digest these poems in any consistent way; this constant shifting creates a landscape of reading that is inherently reflexive and unique. The reader must confront his/her own individual reading process — how do you read a poem set up like a database? How can you translate a slash or marginalized scribble? The movement from page to page highlights this process of reading and responding, of lingering, and is essential: this questioning generates an awareness of reading that is central to the text and begins to take the book beyond the static page.

click here for the full review on the Mansfield Press website.