False Nostalgia

False Nostalgia explores the interaction of memory, identity and narrative – in particular, the relationship between what we remember and the stories we tell about ourselves. Through stand alone poems, intricate sequences and experimental poetics, False Nostalgia considers the disconnect between experience and recollection, the drive to document a moment, the fear of forgetting and the unreliability of memory. Rolfe approaches his subjects obliquely, evoking feelings of connection, loss and the experience of never quite grasping your own understanding of things. The poems place the reader in half-remembered places – beach shacks from past holidays, quivering forests, auction houses of the mind – asking not only what it means to look back fondly on a second-rate experience, but what it means to look forward to looking back on a moment while you’re still living through it.