FOUR TITLES
Gina Mercer |
Weaving nests with smoke and stone (2015)
Susan Austin |
Undertow (2012)
Tim Thorne | Head and shin (2004)
Anne Kellas | The White Room Poems (2016)
Gina Mercer | Weaving nests with smoke and stone (2015)
'Bird calls renovate our days', writes Gina Mercer. Quite so – our days and our lives. Whether we have the grace
and generosity to live on this planet with birds will be the measure of our worth as a species. In this
vital contribution to the emerging field of eco-poetry, Gina Mercer reaches across the species divide, a boundary
that daunts most of us. She reaches out to the exquisite riotry of life – and weaves it deftly
into poems of deep empathy. She paints out 'beige-busy days' in the colours of wonder. It is extraordinary
poetry. Read it, let it renovate your days.
Pete Hay
Structurally and tonally the speaker is removed from other human presences, linked more firmly with the birds and plants
managing to thrive in this inner-city space. Here, birds are totemic, but also humanised – indeed, far more than the ‘human’
figures that appear in the first stanza. While the birds are still clearly linked with human experiences, the close attention to
detail they receive clearly articulates Mercer’s ecocritical sympathies, as well as her rich understandings of human relationships
and emotions. This is a space that deserves greater appreciation, and these are figures are require closer attention. Mercer
treads a careful line between respect and conscription, and is successful in presenting a piece that is equal parts criticism
and celebration.
A delicate investigation of what is not essentially human, weaving nests with smoke and stone is a neatly lyrical
collection that carefully explores love and loss, with an eye to the natural world for support, but also level-headed
awareness of human responsibility.
Siobhan Hodge
(Cordite Poetry Review)
If you don’t know Gina already, you will glean from her writing that she is a woman of many facets and talents. She is a
poet and writer of prose, an academic, an editor and teacher of writing. In her biographical note at the end of
Weaving Nests with Smoke and Stone, she writes that she is ‘currently revelling in Tasmania’. As we launch her
latest poetry collection on its fledgling flight, we hope it is greeted with flocks of critical acclaim. On behalf of
Tasmania’s community of readers and writers, I would like to conclude by saying that Tasmania is revelling in Gina Mercer.
Anne Morgan,
launching Weaving nests with smoke and stone, Hobart Bookshop, 25 Nov 2015
Susan Austin |
Undertow (2012)
"... emerging from the Tasmanian poetry scene and publishing Undertow as her first book of poems, Susan Austin’s poetry is
not out of place next to that of her Walleah [Press] stable mates. Her poems take the reader on what can be read as an autobiographical
journey as they speak of traveling the globe, looking closely at family and relationships of all types and examining in detail
the movement of the mind. These poems collected together speak of a narrative of the self, opening and closing the windows
for glimpses of what was or could have been. But perhaps Austin’s most overarching theme, one that appears in all the
poems collected in this volume, is that of reaching the other – making meaningful contact with lover, mother, sister, or reader.
Lucy Alexander
(Verity La)
I'm here to talk about, and toast, this marvellous book, Undertow. Rereading it for the 4th or 5th time in preparation for
tonight, I understood something vital. Susan Austin is a dancer. Her biographical note declares her to be an occupational
therapist and an eco-socialist activist… but truly she is a dancer. This collection of poetry is actually a dance performance.
In this book Susan performs dance after dazzling dance. Hers is a delicious and potent performance: deft, precise, sensuous and elegant.
Gina Mercer, launching Undertow, Hobart – 11th October 2012
Tim Thorne | Head and shin (2004)
Tim Thorne [1944-2021] was a leading contemporary Australian poet. Author of sixteen collections of poetry, founder of the
Tasmanian Poetry Festival and Cornford Press, Tim was a brilliant and generous polymath, mentor, activist and commentator, who
has left a profound legacy and an extraordinary body of work.
Puncher & Wattmann, publisher of
Greatest Hits: Selected poems 1968 – 2021,
honouring the founder
of the Tasmanian Poetry Festival, the late and great Tim Thorne.
Anne Kellas | The White Room Poems (2016)
In a very important way, all poetry is about itself and therefore about words. (I am using the word “about” here as referring not just to connotative content.) The poetry of The White Room Poems is as deeply, as significantly “about’ so much more. At the level of imagery it deals in such currency as leaves, birds, snow, mist, clouds. There are “the mountain wrapped in scarfs”, the tree with “the leaves of a doilie” and “Sticks of light the colour of sea”. There are many more exquisite visual miniatures.
If all words, all images vanish, what do we have left? Not poetry, perhaps, but we still have humanity with all its potential interactions;
we still have emotion; we still have knowledge. The most difficult task for a poet is to avoid the mere transmission of thoughts, ideas,
knowledge, emotion, even wisdom. Such essential components of our common humanity, universally pervasive as they might be, are not art.
The art of poetry is not made up of them. Too often, the attempt to incorporate into poetry great themes, whether of intense personal
relevance or of more global concern, fails because the “content” (to bow briefly to the simplistic binary terms of “content” and “form”)
is too heavy to be supported. That is why the vast majority of love songs are rubbish, why in memoriam newspaper columns and greeting
cards are so cringeworthy, why most national anthems are laughable in terms of their lyrics.
Tim Thorne, launching
The White Room Poems, Launceston – 12th February 2016