Harry Laing—poetry, 'unsettled'

LAING, Harry—poetry, ‘unsettled”

Harry Laing—poetry, 'unsettled'
Harry Laing—poetry, 'unsettled'

LAING, Harry—poetry, ‘unsettled”

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Sarah Rice

 


These poems sparkle with wit, hum with humour, delight and dare. They unwind a life, move deftly between present and past and betray an ever-present love of the land and language, the world and word-play. Finally they unsettle with a deep ecological warning – in a world where ‘everything melts… who watches over us in the rush towards?’

 
 


Aidan Coleman

 


‘unsettled’ is a collection of broad thematic and formal range. Laing renders our history, our current ecological crisis and some of our contemporary mores into a rich, tumbling music, as memorable as it is accessible. The poems that revisit the author’s past are especially poignant: closing some doors as the windows open to poetry’s crisp, delicious air.

 
 

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The highpoints of Unsettled are scattered throughout.

 


They include some poignant poems about his father suffering dementia, several subtle and evocative poems about his 19th century forebears, the best of the comic poems (always a challenging genre) and a few of his idiosyncratic eco-poems.

 


The tone of the four-poem sequence about the poet’s father, “Born Again”, can be heard clearly in the following excerpt, which also illustrates a sardonic tone heard elsewhere:

 


“You’re a shuffle-man in slippers / though still carefully buttoned / into your old-time manners. // Such a gentleman they call you / and I think little do they know / but why bring that up now, in here / where no one’s got a grip on what they were…”

 


Geoff Page, from a review published in ‘The Canberra Times’, 12th February 2022

 
 
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