The waking world invades the dreamlands in Kate Hall’s first published collection of poetry. Set seemingly in the middle ground between a lucid dream and concrete reality, the poems follow Hall through a land of whimsy touched with the absolute of entropy, joined by a mynah bird that perches within many of the works, a sort of raven figure. Hall tries to dissect reality itself, fearful that an entire life could be lived in the space of a dream. While enjoyably playful with words and structure, finishing The Certainty Dream feels like waking up, just as the last moments of a nocturnal adventure slip away from memory, and the real world around you races in to take its place.
This article appears in Dec 10-16, 2009.