Inspecting Wastelands: Poems, Noeme Grace C. Tabor-Farjani's second collection
of poetry, oscillates between presentist fugitivity of the here-and-now and the
regal dreamlands of what could have been. The poems in this collection span
from North Africa to the Southern Philippines, from Tripoli in the Maghreb
to Cagayan de Oro in Mindanao-thematically touching on outsiderness in the
diaspora and even in the homeland, and staying true to the unspoken creed of
belongingness to nowhere. In this collection, Tabor-Farjani's veering towards
polyvocality is at its best: an elegy to the bygone, a quarantine diary, a love song
to a daughter, a dream journal, an evocation to maternal ancestors, a letter to a
grieving friend.
Beyond domestic liminalities and the suburban cityscape, Tabor-Farjani, as a poet
and as a surviving witness to the world, once again proves herself as a native
of the crevices between sentience and sleep, between higher thought and the
quotidian, between memory and the mythic.
