Poetry review – THE HUM HEARERS: Chris Konrad finds Shey Marque’s new collection to be a search for the irreducible essence at the centre of what we call life
The Hum Hearers
Shey Marque
UWA Publishing
ISBN 9781760803001
£13
From the get-go, Marque outlines elements of her project The Hum Hearers in no uncertain terms. The vehicle for her explorations of hereditary trauma and the ‘quantum entanglement’ of the flow of time – past with present with future – is a gathering of the stories of her ancestors, primarily the matrilineal line. Marque suggests that we are ‘essentially a symphony of particles and light and energy, that’s never destroyed, only transformed and can transcend space and time.’ She calls this symphony ‘the hum’. As a scientist she understands very well the laws of conservation in line with Leibnitz, Newton and Bernoulli. In that lineage stands one Émilie du Châtelet (1706–1749) a female scientist who would fit well into Marque’s wonderful menagerie of strange, tormented, smart and fascinating women ancestors.
As an outstanding poet Marque is well equipped to explore the extra-mundane concepts she is fascinated by and it is in the area of language she excels in her attempts to do so. Be prepared to break out your dictionary as she employs the language of science and weaves that into her, primarily, prose poems. I would have to consider this book as exemplary of contemporary prose poetry not only in this country, but on the world stage. As a matter of fact, Marque uses every literary form available these days to delve deep into Freud’s ‘uncanny’, Jung’s ‘synchronicity’ (which she references in the title poem “The Hum hearers”) or Max Blecher’s ‘irreal’ which I like to call the liminal.
Exciting and intriuguing as her explorations are of other worlds as framed within our own contemporary one, Marque’s poetic voice itself is exceptionally powerful and a joy to hear and experience. This from “Every atom that was you”:
This morning I thought I saw a cracked heart
emptying itself into a rock pool,
three wan faces wailing into the sky.
Or again in “Improbable acts of proximity”:
When minutes go backwards, we will
return all this chaos to order, this drinking glass
will suck wine from out fishy mouths
A couple of notable poetic tropes or artifacts struck me as intriguing and these add to the mysterium of Marque’s poesy. The first is how each title could, in and of themselves, lend to the overall poetic power of the book: a salutary lesson on how to name poems. Her contents section alone is a terrific lesson in the new language of the liminal:
The Old man who spits pearls
Taking photos of strangers after breakfast in the crypt
If a flower could be called a waif
Inhabiting the tesseract
another red-letter day empties its head
Menstrual health – no data, no cycles logged
The second, engaging trope is the frequent use of the word ‘mouth’ in many of the poems (one as already quoted above). This very much reminded me of the Austrian poet Georg Trakl. For me, both Trakl and Marque seek to use this keyword as a sigil, an artistic symbol, standing in for that which cannot fully be expressed, such as overwhelming emotions, indefinable experiences or the erotic unknowable – ‘the hum’. Some other examples:
The rare spice of a shooting star
leaves a sense in your mouth of toast
and a light herbal bitterness –
and again from “Self Portrait as Sound:”
Close-mouthed, I still feel conspicuously loud. Soft hum
surrounded by paisley etched on indigo so loose it occupies the
volume of a seat …
The poet also traces her lineage throughout this collection and suggests that those ‘ … generations past, present and future could co-exist on an energetic level in a space-time continuum.’ Once again, it is her ancestors that act as a symbol/sigil of what she is driving at with regard to the ineffability and liminality of our ongoing relationships with our predecessors, our loved ones still with us and those yet to arrive. Marque explores how we live in this uneasy tension with all of them – in our dreams, hopes, aspirations, curiosity, love and sadness. These feelings and experiences are not easily articulated (and many of us do not even try to express them); but Marque has made a valiant and accessible attempt.
Marque hints at the ‘noise of this world’ in the last lines of the eponymous poem as the final ‘say’ on the matter of that which cannot be spoken but only alluded or pointed to:
The way we travel in and out of time
via sound. I begin to hear the noise of this world again, water,
one note at a time in the gutter, the moon ticking in a tree.
Nothing more can be added nor anything subtracted. All is held in a sublime gathering, a perfect conservation called life.
Jul 11 2025
London Grip Poetry Review – Shey Marque
Poetry review – THE HUM HEARERS: Chris Konrad finds Shey Marque’s new collection to be a search for the irreducible essence at the centre of what we call life
From the get-go, Marque outlines elements of her project The Hum Hearers in no uncertain terms. The vehicle for her explorations of hereditary trauma and the ‘quantum entanglement’ of the flow of time – past with present with future – is a gathering of the stories of her ancestors, primarily the matrilineal line. Marque suggests that we are ‘essentially a symphony of particles and light and energy, that’s never destroyed, only transformed and can transcend space and time.’ She calls this symphony ‘the hum’. As a scientist she understands very well the laws of conservation in line with Leibnitz, Newton and Bernoulli. In that lineage stands one Émilie du Châtelet (1706–1749) a female scientist who would fit well into Marque’s wonderful menagerie of strange, tormented, smart and fascinating women ancestors.
As an outstanding poet Marque is well equipped to explore the extra-mundane concepts she is fascinated by and it is in the area of language she excels in her attempts to do so. Be prepared to break out your dictionary as she employs the language of science and weaves that into her, primarily, prose poems. I would have to consider this book as exemplary of contemporary prose poetry not only in this country, but on the world stage. As a matter of fact, Marque uses every literary form available these days to delve deep into Freud’s ‘uncanny’, Jung’s ‘synchronicity’ (which she references in the title poem “The Hum hearers”) or Max Blecher’s ‘irreal’ which I like to call the liminal.
Exciting and intriuguing as her explorations are of other worlds as framed within our own contemporary one, Marque’s poetic voice itself is exceptionally powerful and a joy to hear and experience. This from “Every atom that was you”:
Or again in “Improbable acts of proximity”:
A couple of notable poetic tropes or artifacts struck me as intriguing and these add to the mysterium of Marque’s poesy. The first is how each title could, in and of themselves, lend to the overall poetic power of the book: a salutary lesson on how to name poems. Her contents section alone is a terrific lesson in the new language of the liminal:
The second, engaging trope is the frequent use of the word ‘mouth’ in many of the poems (one as already quoted above). This very much reminded me of the Austrian poet Georg Trakl. For me, both Trakl and Marque seek to use this keyword as a sigil, an artistic symbol, standing in for that which cannot fully be expressed, such as overwhelming emotions, indefinable experiences or the erotic unknowable – ‘the hum’. Some other examples:
and again from “Self Portrait as Sound:”
The poet also traces her lineage throughout this collection and suggests that those ‘ … generations past, present and future could co-exist on an energetic level in a space-time continuum.’ Once again, it is her ancestors that act as a symbol/sigil of what she is driving at with regard to the ineffability and liminality of our ongoing relationships with our predecessors, our loved ones still with us and those yet to arrive. Marque explores how we live in this uneasy tension with all of them – in our dreams, hopes, aspirations, curiosity, love and sadness. These feelings and experiences are not easily articulated (and many of us do not even try to express them); but Marque has made a valiant and accessible attempt.
Marque hints at the ‘noise of this world’ in the last lines of the eponymous poem as the final ‘say’ on the matter of that which cannot be spoken but only alluded or pointed to:
Nothing more can be added nor anything subtracted. All is held in a sublime gathering, a perfect conservation called life.