95 Books Blog calls Neighbour Procedure 'stunning and extraordinary'

'Rachel Zolf’s Neighbour Procedure is stunning and extraordinary. As Judith Butler blurbs on the back, “…something happens to poetry in these pages, so I no longer know what precisely poetry is or can be.” Zolf’s procedural work with language, intertext, translation and the concept of the neighbour as a productive third term is brought to bear upon the disaster that exceeds representation, in this case the relationship between Israel and Palestine in the Gaza strip. Poetry in this book is indeed more than poetry, and presents a shift in discourse that exposes the fallacious idea that there is an us and a them, that the position of witness is an innocent one, that language is safe. This book is harsh and hard to read; that’s how you know it’s working.'