Ron Pretty has published eight collections of poetry and five chapbooks over his long career. His latest and perhaps last book, 101 Poems, from Pitt Street Poetry’s Collected Works series, includes pieces from his previous collections, as well as some new work. We start with The Habitat of Balance (1988) and go all the way through to his most recent collection, The Left Hand Mirror (2017), before encountering a selection of new poems.  

Pretty is a thoroughly assured poet. His command of the form is evident on every page, from the formal ‘Suburban Aubade’, a kind of domestic-mundane tableau of his partner and their baby, to the free verse in ‘Blue Movies’, where a mother reassures a passing stranger that the adopted child in the pram is in fact her own, regardless of their skin colour. Pretty seems as comfortable in the formal as he is in the free, but his free verse is especially good. ‘Blue Movies’ is a great example of his prowess. It begins: ‘Child in the pram, your dark face laughing up / at your pale mother, the barking dogs that mark / your slow perambulation down the street.’ We read slowly before coming to a crawl as we pronounce that multi-syllabic ‘per-am-bul-at-ion’. Pretty matches the rhythm of a casual stroll enjoyed by mother and daughter. Although simple, the juxtaposition of ‘dark’ and ‘pale’, the assonance and half-rhyme of ‘laughing’ and ‘barking’ which continues in a chain to ‘barking’ and ‘mark’, result in a coherent and affecting expression of experience that, in its simplicity, is satisfying in good poetry. It shows the confidence of a skilled poet. What is striking here and in many other places in this collection is Pretty’s plain language. Rarely does he lean on obscure references or complex language to create or convey meaning.