Is our identity more of a composite than we realise? Ask anyone how their identity is formed and most answers will include DNA and core values.
However, photographer and poet Mary Macpherson explores identity based on the interactions we have with friends, family and the wider world.
Increasingly, technology is playing an evolving role in these personal interactions. Today we can chat, view, comment and share ideas from behind a screen.
Being a successful swan is how Mary describes living in a digital world. In her new poetry collection, this is one of the images she uses to help explain the social media age;
For a while, living a digital life was like being a successful swan
Dignified gliding over the lake
like you understood the way the world worked,
the world being hard bright stones at the bottom
of the lake and you on the surface, held up.
This distinctive collection reflects on the intricacies of our social and media selves. Whether online or in real life, we often perceive others identity differently. The second section introduces several characters who contemplate each other’s lives in a myriad of ways.
“What I’ve loved about writing these poems is the chance to invent fictional characters and deliberately explore themes such as how much our identities are bound up in each other,” says Mary.
“I like to explore how people react off each other. It’s been an exciting opportunity to try out different voices,” she says.
Mary Macpherson is a photographer and poet. Her photography has been widely exhibited and her poetry has been published in literary journals.
Reviewer: Andrea Molloy
Cuba Press, RRP $25.00