Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

‘Leaves falling like language’

A lyrical index of the natural world
by
September 2024, no. 468

Song in the Grass by Kate Fagan

Giramondo, $27 pb, 101 pp

‘Leaves falling like language’

A lyrical index of the natural world
by
September 2024, no. 468

‘Whatever the bird does is right for the bird to do –’

Judith Wright

Australian poetry has always had a particular affinity for birds. This can be either infuriating or indispensable, depending on whom you consult. We might blame Judith Wright for this affinity – or the British pastoral tradition. We might blame the big prizes associated with ecopoems. Or we could just admit that birds are actually really cool and totally worthy of our poetic attention. Kate Fagan intuits all this with Song in the Grass, and she both leans into it and subverts it in equal turns.

It feels impossible not to go into a collection with such a title expecting ninety-two pages of heavily naturalistic and pastoral imagery. Indeed, things kick off with the poem ‘one year one garden’, which, somewhat perversely, just lists a bunch of birds. It is like a copy-and-pasted eBird checklist from the Blue Mountains. And with this, what Fagan seems to say is: grab your binoculars and 600mm telephoto lenses, folks, let’s chill out and appreciate nature for a while.

Song in the Grass

Song in the Grass

by Kate Fagan

Giramondo, $27 pb, 101 pp

From the New Issue

You May Also Like

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.