Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By Corey Wakeling, Giramondo Publishing, $24.00.
The second collection from praised poet Corey Wakeling’s resumes his review into language and the spatial architectures of history and culture.
The poet has lived in Melbourne and Western Australia where the poems range. It also goes further afield.
Regarded as one of Australia’s daring and baroque writers. Strong in its deployment of baroque imagery and modernist citation, The Alarming Conservatory uniquely captures the fear and pace of our contemporary condition.
Set among 20th century ruins, the poems are cast as if hallucinations: colonial-style houses are ‘guarded by palm trees’, Royal Park ‘detains two immoveable statues’ while the ‘Wheel of Fortune dizzies’.
From the first poem, Wakeling’s work “interpolates the way we live and how we dwell in the everyday”.
Attribution has also been given in whereby it’s said: “…Wakeling revels in the high gruesome of syntax – the Edward Gorey sheen of camp creepiness. I applaud his book’s energy, social satire, its forays into kitsch and pop.”
