| TIM THORNE Launch speech Catalogue of Love, Liz Winfield Walleah Press, October 2006The title of one of the poems in this collection is 'Sometimes words are not enough', and the poem itself makes out an emotionally strong argument for the truth of that statement, but in the case of this Catalogue of Love words - the words chosen, the way they are placed together, and the power they have to elicit images and feelings in the minds of readers - are enough. At least for this reader they are enough for me to say that this is a great little book. When I published Liz's first collection, Too Much Happens, back in 2003, I knew that this would be just the start of a career as a poet that would develop into something substantial enough for the Australian poetry world to take notice. That book's reception was gratifying, and now we have a follow-up which provides a small taste of what the future holds. One critic said of Liz's earlier work that her writing is 'so intimate that you can feel her breath as you turn the page'. This quality is an essential part of the Catalogue of Love as well, but it is only one of the book's qualities. Liz Winfield may well be the best poet in Tasmania at dealing with the intimacies of life, of the poignancies of family situations, of personal doubt and the insecurity which is never far from the surface of any relationship, but she is also able to transcend the immediate, the particular, and strike a chord that resonates in those chambers where the big universal themes abide. She achieves this in the best way, which is to say, by concentrating on getting the particular just right - so exquisitely right that it melds seamlessly with the universal. Liz is a clever enough poet to know that the successful path to the big abstraction starts with the concrete detail. What is more, she can pick exactly the right concrete detail. For example, in 'Night Eyes',
and in a lot of the other poems there are similar triggers, sense perceptions that lead us way beyond the image, whether it be of flowers in their 'potted freedom between concrete and lawn' or the teenager's mobile phone which 'sits / like a hot rock', or in the lovely evocation of childhood and her father the sunlight spearing through the cigarette smoke which 'would light the kitchen blue'. The other aspect of Liz's writing that I want to commend to you is the way she can express a complex concept so clearly in so few words. 'each morning I face the office of my soul', or 'the shadow / which holds my shape', are just a couple of examples from this collection. I have a lot of pleasure in launching this book and commending it to you. If you are not yet familiar with Liz Winfield's work, it makes a great introduction.
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