I use words to counter chaos. I map the mountains, exploring peaks and valleys, avoiding avalanches. In a series of tender, bite-sized poems on being a writer, loneliness, faith, patriarchy, climate change, grief, and more, Crystal Warren offers up an ode to the every day. With Warren’s signature light touch, Predictive Text is sensitive, unaffected, a relief from the brash, unrelenting tumult of twenty-first century life, while tethered to deeper truths.
Here’s a poet who truly gets that less is more; she never labours the point or strains after a metaphor. The collection is pure essence, with the title poem a heart’s cry of bereavement. The collection is divided into sections, my personal favourites being Predictive Text and Long Distance.