Phobia is a collection of meditations on the self - how we perceive ourselves, our internal thoughts and private emotions, and often that ever-present, though subconscious preoccupation with how others view us - that fear of being perceived as something we are not, or the opposite - wanting to be seen as something we wish to be. In poems such as 'Arachne-phobia' and 'Flying Bricks', Brandon examines this theme of identity - the awkward self-examination and critique of adolescence: ‘you step back, too late/to hide relief on your face/her long smile hits you, right there/in that place you thought was safe’. There is a sense of loss, too, in this poem - the loss of childhood innocence, the coming of adolescent changes and desires: ‘fingers as long as legs once braided doll’s hair’ now ‘intertwine with another’s’.
Brandon has the gift of making one stop and think - to re-read what could initially be taken to be a straightforward, one-dimensional poem, and to see in it a deeper meaning. 'These Bones' gives a short, simple suggestion of the inner beauty of a person - an essence and goodness, the fundamentals of the self that we often struggle to find and, once seen, crave to see again. It leaves one reminding oneself to be a better person, and to see that beauty in others - the narrator makes us see this through and beneath the rather clinical-seeming description of having an x-ray taken.
Brandon has the breadth to be light-hearted and sparse with her language but also to be eloquent and serious, with a quiet beauty to her words. The language in 'Mottephobia' is breath-taking, conjuring up images of butterflies like ‘eyelash-light sweepings against your chest.’ In 'Miser Miser' - another poem about the self and how it is easier sometimes to make sense of one’s identity by viewing ourselves as something other - in this case a roasting bird which spits ‘rosemary like bad words’, Brandon creates another beautiful image when describing the plucked, ‘sticky’ feathers: ‘I saw a little girl run/ to gather them up, brushing them against her face/ expecting softness, drops them, rubbing hands on dress.’ Although not explicitly described, this image conjures up the confused, disappointed face of the girl - a younger version of the narrator of this poem, we suspect - and we look on as she watches the pile of feathers drifting down to the ground.
The theme of identity continues in 'Wool' coupled with another major theme of gender which recurs throughout many of Brandon’s poems. She is mainly concerned with women - and in 'Wool' and 'Laundry', how women have been undervalued in the past, of how women’s lives were hard there are images of gnarled, coarse hands due to the very physical work of old-fashioned laundering and wool-making: ‘Joints fossilising, knuckles swelling.’ But, says the narrator of 'Wool', ‘my hands aspire to hardship’. Modern day women do not have this same physical hardship in their working or domestic lives, but they do have other worries and concerns, and the women of the poem from the days of old warn: ‘they tell me to rub Vaseline into my nails and never let my fingers feel the cold.’ The poem in its simplest form is a reminder to oneself not to be slack, to work hard and fulfill oneself as a woman, and to take time to care for oneself, but it is also perhaps a reminder to men of what women go through. 'Laundry' also implores us not to take women for granted and not to forget that women are women: ‘Every feature of every girl a thing to unfold’, that despite the drudgery of the everyday, of work and home, there is a fundamental, undeniable femininity at the core. Even in the description of a sheet being folded, there is a delicacy suggested: ‘‘ave to dance a two-some reel a few times over/hold the hem like a lady’s hand’.
Phobia is less a series of poems about fear, as the title would suggest. It is more an exploration of human nature and identity, with Brandon cleverly using the construct of phobia as the structural backbone of her thought-provoking collection.
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