Cahill has a sure voice when evoking nature, but the nature poems almost always contain a further layer in which the described comes to represent not just itself but also the describer (the poet). This quality is particularly evident in 'Liberty at Box Head' (p.4): the poet observes the sea and its creatures - swallows, finches, banksias, and seagulls, all described with enough colour and detail to transport the reader to the shore. But the final lines reveal that this is more than a mere nature poem. These lines: '... I think of those seagulls / in salmon rich waters. One may lose a leg / through sheer play - the price of liberty' imply that those of the human species who seek freedom also run the risk of injury, changing a descriptive piece about nature to a rumination on the nature of being human. This is a deft and subtle display of craft, making larger themes and issues emerge from the small and particular. A similar effect is achieved in 'Platinum after Shining' (p.37), a meditation on the drowning of a loved pet dog, and the poet's own sense of waning youth, 'waiting ... for the runaway puppy of childhood to return'. This poem contains an intense sense of place in its descriptions of the sea, plants, relationships, and the slow decay that accompanies living. Similarly, also, 'Black Bamboo' (p.12) personifies a misplaced plant that has thrived despite the crush of development.
'Biodiversity in the Colony' (p.52) describes the loss of species and habitat to mining. There is tremendous irony in the final lines, 'The island, once densely forested, moth-eaten with the best of intentions. / Enough silver was discovered to make it a worthwhile venture.' when it is clear from the earlier descriptions of forest and animal species that much has been sacrificed in pursuit of these riches.
The title poem, 'The Accidental Cage' (p.5) is also lovingly evocative of nature - a description of 'the beauty of panic' observed when two birds become trapped in a barn's loft, its long rhythmic lines imitating the rhythm of flight. I did not, however, fully understand the intent of the line 'Here the mosquitoes had been bred by dentists'. This kind of ambiguity occurs in several otherwise fine poems, creating a slippery nebulousness that leaves the reader with a vague impression rather than the solid pictures Cahill is capable of producing. 'Chimera' (p.14), an account of a dream, and 'The Fourth Veil', an account of a dawn, are also guilty of this vagueness. The overall meaning of 'Mantra' (p.16) is also open to interpretation, but it does contain the striking line, 'laundry is the wind's xylophone'.
Other pieces are concerned with social justice, in particular as it applies to refugees, and survivors of war or torture. It seems implicit that some of this portraits are of people encountered in Cahill's professional life as a General Practitioner. 'Survival (in subtitles)' (p.3) is a powerful paean to a 'soft-mouthed girl', a survivor of a recent war. Its three line stanzas demonstrate craft, control of both the language and the tone, and a facility for striking and original metaphor: 'children / were floating tariff for an overcrowded junk'. In 'Pacific Solution' (p.7) we encounter a father and son separated by razor wire, one 'scurry[ing] past the perimeter' in a vain attempt to achieve release with wire cutters. It's a spare, pathos-laden poem that expounds on the political from a humanistic rather than ideological perspective. 'Valediction' (p.36), a description of an afternoon spent with a woman whose son has suicided, also drips with pathos and empathy.
Many of the poems are set in exotic or faraway places - Harlem, Manhattan, Thailand, Nepal, Laos, and India, as well as the poet's native Sydney, which acquires its own exoticism in such company. 'Ice' (p.8) is about an encounter with a Nepalese glacier; in 'The Garden of Understanding' the poet experiences difference via the lives of relatives in Bombay. This geographical eclecticism paints Cahill as a citizen of the world, but these poems do not quite achieve the depth and strong evocation of place contained in the Sydney poems, instead appearing to at times skate across the surfaces of the visual experience.
There are four lovely domestic poems (pp 18-21) on pregnancy, marriage and the early days of motherhood; these are loving but also realistic and unsentimental - the adored child leaves 'puddles of wee' and a 'warm, sudden piss in my lap over dinner'. On another tack, 'Writing Eva: a fantasy' (p.53) is an ambitious and unusual poem that examines the relationship between the writer and her invented character. Eva's voice seems completely apposite to the author's, leading her to draw the conclusion, 'I write to invent myself / as someone else / and forget what I am'.
Regrettably, a few grammatical and typographical errors have slipped through the net. In 'Riding the Tube' (p.51), for example, the opening words, 'A gunfire' clearly should be either 'Gunfire' or 'A gunshot'; later, in the same poem, 'The natives, / tied (tired?) of bureaucracy' has slipped by the editor's eye.
'Narcolepsy' (p.43) contains the following oddity: 'Here there're no factories' in a piece that nowhere else relies on colloquialism, and 'Songkhan' (p46) refers to 'bucketfuls of water', which probably should read less clumsily as 'buckets full'. But these are minor criticisms. Overall, The Accidental Cage is an accomplished debut from a poet with an eagle eye, a keen ear, and an empathetic heart. I have no doubt this is just the beginning of a poetic career that promises further pleasures and surprises.
(Reviewed by Liz Hall-Downs, June 2007)
