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The titles of the poems in Willa Carroll’s new book, Demolition Suite, begin with the word score. Score is an interesting word. We score when we are playing a game and make some points and that is good: we’ll win. Score can also mean a line you cut or scratch into something, a measurement, a future mark to refer back to or sever. Score is what choreographers do when they figure out the pattern of a dance, the what and where and when of how the dancers move. And to score is also how a composer writes a song, many scores within one score, a band with its instruments, the parts making it whole.
The poems in Demolition Suite move like dance and music. They are vivid and lively too, even though they sometimes have to do with dying as we are today with forever chemicals and climate change. But, in movement there is life, and in life there is hope. For me, these poems move like a mountain stream beginning at some hidden spring and ending in some ocean, but existing along the way as well passing by and glistening. What do you think? Relax, rest a spell, cup your hand and drink.
In the video below Willa Carroll reads from Demolition Suite and also Nerve Chorus, an earlier work. Enjoy.
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Demolition Suite is published by Split Rock Press. You can check it out here:
https://www.splitrockreview.org/
To find out more about Willa Carroll and her work, follow the link below:
https://www.willacarroll.com/
You can also check out the Vimeo at the link below that features earlier versions of the chapbook poems in Demolition Suite, and also won Best Poetry Film and the International Migration and Environment Film Festival in 2021:
https://www.triquarterly.org/issues/issue-159/project-hazmatic-score-body-cautionary-tale
Willa Carroll