Andrew Sant’s tenth book of poems marks a new, welcome direction in his work. Many of his signature flourishes are still here: intimate, detailed observations on domestic life, travel, relationships, history, and popular music. But he has added something special: strange, unpredictable associations and a willingness to break free of the constraints that kept much of his formal, lyrical earlier w ... (read more)
Anthony Lawrence
Anthony Lawrence’s most recent collection is Ordinary Time, a collaboration with Audrey Molloy, (Pitt Street Poetry, 2021). His books and poems have won a number of awards, including the Peter Porter Poetry Prize and the NSW Premier's Award. He lives on the far north coast of New South Wales.
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Blessings and praiseto the dark entanglement of caught branchesI continue to see,after years of crossing the causeway,as a black swanholding her place in the current, her headheld resolute and serene,her cygnets the shadows that advance and recedein the eddies she makes going nowhere.
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A doctor with a faceworn and grey as his cardigancalls my namein his rooms
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Chris Wallace-Crabbe’s ability to reveal the marvellous in the seemingly mundane layers of the quotidian is a striking aspect of this new book. There are compassionate, fluid meditations on many aspects of urban life, ageing, and a quirky cast of characters from the poet’s life and wide reading.
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Stephen Kelen’s new book is an ambitious, wide and free-ranging journey through past and present, war and peace, family life, travel and technology. It has all the hallmarks of Kelen’s previous books: a marvellous ear and restless eye, a gift for narrative that challenges as much as it reaffirms, and a willingness to tackle anything that takes his attention. These (mostly) narrative poems have ... (read more)
Having mastered the art of using magnetsin discretionary acts like making a pencil float above a tableor a throwdown of iron ... (read more)
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Paul Muldoon’s friend and mentor, the late Seamus Heaney, once remarked that reading Muldoon was like being in a room with two informants: one a compulsive liar and one who always tells the truth. The trick, Heaney suggested, is ‘trying to formulate a question that will elicit an answer from either one that can be reliably decoded’.
Muldoon’s poems are renowned for their sleight of hand, ... (read more)