Tourist
Poetry by Tak Erzinger

The poetry collection Tourist encompasses a journey that unburdens the weight of past guilt and trauma. During this voyage spanning multiple cultures and stages in life, the importance of following one’s inner voice and embracing one’s own path is discovered. Revelations are made in the middle of the night, during a pandemic, in the heart of the forest, at the seaside and in food, snapshots of past and present. Through the wonder and surprise of nature, the search for identity is explored, surrendering to what cannot be changed and confronting the mercurial temperament of relationships and how they are perceived, one poem at a time.
 
In her collection Tourist, TAK Erzinger invites us on a journey. It’s a deeply personal one: abandonment, discovery, loss and acceptance vie for space on the page.  With the help of winged messengers and flora and fauna that creeps, winds and demands we engage, Erzinger presents otherness and connectedness. She leads us through the flux of the human experience with powerful layers of imagery from the natural world.
 
Nothing in life stays still. Death and change are background constants but so are love and hope. Erzinger’s natural world artistry plays out against the backdrop of subtle rhythms; the carefully curated intervals of line and stanza and the chiaroscuro of language against silence.

Tourist is a Jackson Pollock splatter canvas, with each life lesson a mark drawing us in to examine more closely. By consciously managing the space on the page she redraws borders of expectation. The sum of the parts sitting in a whole we aspire to understand, but like a wisp of breath, a fluttering wing it eludes, and we chase; this impetus drawing right to end of the collection while imbuing us with the desire to start again as soon as we get there.
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The collection is entitled Tourist, but Erzinger’s uncompromising layering of her inner landscape with the natural world takes us on a journey past the other to a home she believes exists: a dimension where shared experience, strength and hope connect readers to her world, but also to each other. The language of her poetry forges a place where no one is a stranger because we are together uncovering a place, we can all belong.
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TAK Erzinger is an American/Swiss poet and artist with a Colombian background. Her poetry has been featured in Bien Acompañada from Cornell University, The Muse from McMaster University, River And South Review, The Welter, and more. Her debut chapbook, Found: Between The Trees was published by Grey Border Books, Canada 2019. Erzinger’s most recent poetry collection, At The Foot Of The Mountain, Floricanto Press, California 2021, has been announced by the University of Indianapolis, Etchings Press as the Whirling Prize winner for 2021 for best nature poetry book. Her first audio drama, Stella’s Constellation, was produced by Alternative Stories And Fake Realities Podcasts, out of the UK.

Tourist is a forthcoming publication by Sea Crow Press.
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Reviewed by
Madeleine White​
​2/13/2023

Madeleine was born in Germany, with roots in Canada and the UK. A magazine publisher and editor, she has produced national and international web and print magazines, creating a voice for those without one, such as the successful Nina-Iraq, a project she worked on with the World Bank to reach out to Iraqi women everywhere. Since 2019, she has been founder/editor of Write On! magazine and Write on Extra e-zine, published by Pen to Print, an Arts Council NPO organization. Madeleine’s speculative debut Mother Of Floods was published by Crowsnest Books in 2020 and her debut poetry collection, The Horse And The Girl, by Lapwing Publications in 2022.

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