Set in the year 2200, the story follows Norma Christianstead, the first individual nurtured from conception to adulthood in a zero-gravity environment. The narrative explores the implications of micro-gravity on various aspects of human development, including physical growth, intellectual capabilities, social interactions, and psychological well-being. As Norma navigates her unique upbringing, the book delves into the profound effects of her extraordinary circumstances on her identity and relationships.
Patrick Moran's fourth collection, Reckonings, traces the poet's journey from a rural upbringing, marked by religious fervour, to a world of fraught intensities and troubled legacies. Having charted his progress through a diocesan boarding school, where he takes his first, tentative steps as a poet, Moran next focuses on early adulthood, a period of existential questing and drifting, when he struggles to find a voice in the classroom and on the page. While the last section opens on a buoyant note, with a group of marriage poems, echoes of earlier turbulence are still heard, notably in "Spectral" where nightmares disrupt his sleep and memories rip open/ (his) delicate/ stitching. Indeed, the past - its moulding, its affirmations, its shadowing - pervades Moran's reckonings in this section: whether in taking stock of his teaching career; in re-assessing his heritage; or brooding, characteristically, on blighted lives and might-have-beens. As RECKONINGS tries to keep faith with its formative influences, the poet bears witness, in these unsparingly honest lyrics, to his life and times: turning, as he observes in "Makings", his restless days into jottings, numbered pages: as if the unrecorded life were not worth living.
This Element examines four key questions raised by the prospect of a fantasy
canon: the way in which canon and genre influence each other; the overwhelming
presence of Tolkien in any discussion of the classics of fantasy; the multi-
media and transmedia nature of the field; and the push for a more inclusive
and diverse canon.
Focusing on the integration of culture in educational settings, this work offers insightful classroom accounts and thorough analysis of teaching materials. It explores how cultural contexts influence pedagogy, providing a comprehensive understanding of the subject.
