Gina Mercer is not a prolific poet, and reading her latest collection it is evident that her poems are not written in haste. It has been eight years since her first, well-received book Oceans in the Kitchen (1999). More recently, she was featured in the Wagtail booklet series, where it would seem that many of the poems in Handfeeding the Crocodile have already appeared, in addition to their original publications in literary magazines.