Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
Edited by Sarah Holland-Batt, Black Inc., $29.99.
“I hope you see in these poems what I see: order and rebellion, ardour and irony, beauty and abjection and everything in between.”
Holland-Batt says she’s “thrilled by this year’s haul” of works, and it’s easy to see why.
Poems are read differently to other texts. For Sarah, images “insinuate” themselves everywhere she goes. In reaching this selection she has privileged individual poems, not poets.
Poetry does not have form, inevitable shape or subject matter. They range from formal verse to unofficial.
“They blossom from a strange miscellany of subject matter, too: corpse flowers and craft beef tastings populate these pages, as do pigeons trapped inside the dome of the Hagia Sophia, Anna Karenina, cloud formations in Sydney, a plague of bogong moths invading Parliament House, the Borroloola Rodeo and Mahler.”
“Some poems tap into the pop culture zeitgeist and speak in the lexicon of tweets, memes and emojis. Others turn their attention to urgent political, social and environmental issues.”
This award-winning poet, critic, editor and academic presents an anthology where eclecticism is displayed. Sarah demonstrates the diversity, inventive brilliance and dynamism of Australia’s finest poets including Fay Zwicky, Rae Desmond Jones and John Upton.
Whether addressing biotechnology or domestic violence, migrant experience or the natural world, the poems in this anthology are sure to inspire, provoke and move. Holland-Batt has assembled a brilliant set of voices, styles and moods.
In their wit and empathy, their solace and provocation, these poems will stay with the reader long after the moment of reading.
