Review of Habitat by Bashabi Fraser

The book reviewed here, Bashabi Fraser’s Habitat, is a poetry collection centred around our planet — its richness, beauty, and the necessity to protect it. Alternating simple, straightforward style and highly metaphorical poems, it oscillates between a fascination with the earth’s landscapes, fauna, and fl ora and a more rational concern over dangers threatening it, like deforestation and climate change, or a preoccupation with other universally encountered problems, such as colonization and exile. Whether the tone is one of wonder or refl ection, most of the poems display remarkable aesthetic innovation that combines unusual imagery, unconventional rhyme patterns, and an occasional recourse to intertextuality.