Infinity Pool

by Vona Groarke

Just as an infinity pool gives the illusion of one invisible edge, the dividing line between poems and the world they process can be magically tricky to discern. Infinity Pool, Vona Groarke’s ninth poetry collection and fifteenth book, tests the limits of spaces poems make for themselves. In language precise, luminous and spry, these poems write into the point where anything might slip into something else — the Atlantic become an actor; a luggage carousel be a reckoning; a poem nudge itself gently over its own fourth wall.

Genres: Poetry

64 pages, Paperback

First published May 22, 2025

Reviews

[Ed · Rating 3 out of 5]

All of the reviews I've read of this collection seem to focus on how it plays with and interrogates the form and bounds of what a poem is and while this is definitely a preoccupation of the collection, it's not what stood out to me. Instead, I was continually interested in how the poems subtly express the thoughts and feelings of the poet through this play with form.
Even the title poem seemed to me more about the poet than poetry, with the 'Infinity Pool' under examination coming from a dream of the speaker that they try and fail to express in the form of a poem. This dream image seems to sit at the centre of a nexus of water imagery that points to but cannot fully contain the understated anxieties and sorrows that lie beneath the technical surface of the poems.

[T P Kennedy · Rating 3 out of 5]

An enjoyable collection. There's a very good mind in evidence here. The poems are clever - particularly a series envisaging the Atlantic ocean in various roles. It's entertaining.