Oliver Friggieri 

This collection of poems is the work of a mature writer striving to strike a middle course between two extremes: being totally faithful to the dictates of her soul and making herself fully understood at a first reading. The eternal compromise between self-expression and immediate communication is here illustrated through a set of poems which can all be considered as autonomous, whereas a subtle line of thought, a set of stylistic devices, and a persistently identifiable tonality immediately lead to the conclusion that they all unwittingly form part of one long poetic statement. The hermetic dimension is itself an extension of the thematic content, namely the complexity of human relations.   Therese Pace shows a complete command of the language as well as a remarkable ability to handle words and phrases with ease, perhaps with a sense of irony, frequently defying the elementary laws of syntax so as to arrive at her own version of verbalisation, namely the literary modality with which feelings and thoughts are built up into, or even reduced to, grammatical statements. It all implies that feeling is essentially incommunicable, and poetry is nothing more than an imperfect, unfaithful resort. Various moods are experienced and put into shape as Pace wanders through the diverse avenues of life, namely the situations depicted in her verse.  She seems to claim to be taking a stand on behalf of all of us, and specifically of those who are facing a decisive challenge. Perhaps all poems fall into such a thematic category, but it is in Need that Therese Pace succeeds most in expressing such a predicament.  This line sums it all and can be easily considered as the key-sentence: 'We try to grip the reins of our life's bolter'. The way Therese Pace chooses words from various sectors of the language and readily adapts them to the general environment of her poems makes this collection a worthy example of how content and form should produce one unique whole.