The Apothecary of Flight by Jane Burn is a heady flight into the art of poetry itself: its vital importance as a tool for expression; for understanding and translating the self; for articulating the sheer force and joy of poetry and the way, for a person with autism, it can hold, identify and celebrate both the smallest and weightiest of life's experiences and concepts. These unfettered and exquisite poems pulse with the details of both the wild and tame, the sacred and the humane – observing nature and animals with an artist's eye, capturing the ways in which place and time can hold the experiences of the body, memory and identity. This ongoing dialogue with poetry itself sets a visionary path towards discovery – the page as a place to root oneself, a place of deep creative freedom, self-permission, belonging and defiance. Ultimately, the form, presence and physicality of Burn's extraordinary poems move us with compassion towards the happiest solitude of words, and of love.
