Sometimes the world feels saturated with disembodied images: I read ads hovering above my head on the Tube, doomscroll without actually engaging with the news, and browse trinkets on Etsy without ever trying them on. Like many others, in the comfort of a consumerist, digital world, I’ve traded substance for videos and photographs. Can we—and should we—take a step back and rethink our relationship with the visual world? It is this question that New Zealand poet Iain Britton addresses in his new chapbook Uncertain Densities.
Released in late October, Uncertain Densities is an homage to the late American photographer Diane Arbus, famed for her sensitive, psychologically intense portrayals of New York individuals. “She fascinated me when I first started looking at her pictures,” Britton explained at a recent launch event in Pembroke College, Cambridge. Indeed, the poems—each one no longer than a few lines—feel like photographs. Britton writes in all lowercase, forgoes punctuation in favour of wide blank spaces between phrases, and numbers his poems instead of titling them. The effect is a structural simplicity that allows the imagery to take centre stage. And imagery is where Britton shines: from orchards full of trapped moons to foetuses sleeping in pools of pink champagne, the scenes in his poems are at once bizarre and beautiful.
At the same time, the poems express a scepticism towards the importance of visual culture. The ending lines of ‘Poem 6’ are particularly disorienting: “a girl dashes after the image / of a blackbird”. The phrasing is mesmerising: why the “image” of a blackbird? Why not just “a girl dashes after a blackbird”? The poem highlights the difference between a thing and its image: do we tend to focus on still, unmoving pictures of our world, rather than the world itself? Have we forgotten that we’re also flesh-and-blood individuals, in need of contact?
The solution, Uncertain Densities seems to suggest, is to blend both sight and touch in our observation of the world. Britton describes his latest work as a form of “tactic poetry”, in which “the meanings of the poems are secondary to that of the images the readers are touching with their eye”. The poems encourage us to see the world in terms of physical contact: the night in ‘Poem 10’, for example, is described as being coated in “furry glitter”. In another poem, the moonlight smears itself physically on windowpanes. Under our gaze, and under Britton’s pen, writing and reading become dynamic and tactile acts.
Britton’s exploration of touch doesn’t stop at the poems: the physical book itself is a delight to hold. The chapbook, published by Rufus Books, was produced as a collaboration, led by publisher Ágnes Cserháti. All 65 copies of the book have spines meticulously hand-sewn with black string by Gary Dunfield, who also printed the inside pages. The cover is letterpress-printed by Deborah Barnett, meaning that readers can feel the slight indent of the title on the thick, textured handmade paper—already, we have the impression that words are meant to be felt as well as read. There are no e-copies available. From its production to its content, the book revolves around the link between eyes and hands.
My English professor is adamant on the importance of reading physical copies of books: “You’re not just a pair of disembodied eyes floating above a text,” she once said. The same, Britton seems to suggest, applies to our participation in everyday life. Uncertain Densities is a call to bring intimacy back into the act of observation, to touch the world—as he says—with our eyes.
Words by Keziah Cho
Correction: This review was amended 3 November 2025. An earlier version mistakenly described Gary Dunfield as publisher, instead of correctly noting that Uncertain Densities is published by Rufus books, with Gary Dunfield sewing the spines and printing the inside pages, and Deborah Barnett printing the cover in letterpress.
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