Inspecting Wastelands: Poems

Inspecting Wastelands: Poems, Noeme Grace C. Tabor-Farjani's second collection of poetry, oscillates between presentist fugitivity of the here-and-now and the regal dreamlands of what could have been. The poems in this collection span from North Africa to the Southern Philippines, from Tripoli in the Maghreb to Cagayan de Oro in Mindanao-thematically touching on outsiderness in the diaspora and even in the homeland, and staying true to the unspoken creed of belongingness to nowhere. In this collection, Tabor-Farjani's veering towards polyvocality is at its best: an elegy to the bygone, a quarantine diary, a love song to a daughter, a dream journal, an evocation to maternal ancestors, a letter to a grieving friend. Beyond domestic liminalities and the suburban cityscape, Tabor-Farjani, as a poet and as a surviving witness to the world, once again proves herself as a native of the crevices between sentience and sleep, between higher thought and the quotidian, between memory and the mythic.