Second collection from the poet of powerful emotions & vivid imagery The Zoo Father underlines the authors reputation as a questing poet capable of outstanding imagistic flourishes & surprising associations. This extraordinary & powerful volume is comprised of two sections the first about with the poets relationship with her father the second with her mother. Section One is heavily imbued with imagery of the poets travels in South America & her researches in the cultures & ecology of the Venezuelan. Pain anger bewilderment are refracted through a rich often sensual imagery of fauna hallucinatory drugs & tribal beliefs. This gives the poems their originality & prevents subject matter of childhood abandonment & abuse becoming too harrowing. The imagery adapted from shamanistic beliefs is especially memorable. Section Two is set in southern France in an almost equally exotic location of vineyards & dinosaur plateaux. It concerns the poets family holidays in the vineyard" & her rediscovery & subsequent repossession of that place. Once again the poems delineate a primary relationship (with the poets mother) with the lushness of the imagery putting into surprising context the development of that relationship."