A haunting tribute to the bonds between humans and animals
YOUNG ADULT
The Foal in the Wire
Robbie Coburn
Hachette, $19.99
How many of us as children have suffered from the onslaught of our family unhappiness? How many of us have blamed ourselves for things that went 'wrong', that were never our fault, and how many of us have reached out for something to help us feel safe in our troubled world?
In the chaos of alcoholism, affairs and mayhem that constituted my childhood, I reached out for horses, and it seems as if Robbie Coburn, a Melbourne-based poet and recently published YA author, had a similar experience. When I reviewed Coburn's 2024 book Ghost Poetry, I was stunned by its visceral, haunting beauty, and now hot on its heels, or hooves, comes The Foal in the Wire, a verse novel about the potential power of the relationship between horses and humans to transform a troubled life.
After my review, Coburn and I made contact to discuss the profound effect horses have had on our lives. I knew he was writing a YA verse novel, and wondered how he would transition to that specific and complex genre. But Coburn is nothing if not versatile.
His haunting novel tells the tale of Sam, who lives on a farm where his father trains horses for a living. One evening, fleeing the nightly familial rows, Sam sees Julia, a girl from the neighbouring farm, standing over a foal trapped in barbed wire on the boundary fence.
The journey they embark on together to keep the foal alive is full of the tension Coburn brings to his poetry.
The very first verse sets the scene:
'As I run down the veranda steps
in the dark
I can still hear them screaming
at each other
inside the house.'
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