Peter Pierce: ‘The Canberra Times’, 9th October, 2015

Another confident and distinguished poetic voice can be heard in Janette Pieloor’s ripples rnder the skin. The title poem ends with a disturbing simplicity: “The people aren’t ready. They’re still/in the uncurling, in a scene dark and beautiful.” The present participle disquiets; makes strange that declarative first sentence. The blandly titled ‘The Housewife’ goes on to detail a life of quiet desperation. It ends: “fools with hands will dry your tears/you hid beneath the iron”. Elsewhere we encounter “Apple-dumpling Mary/handcuffed to the sherry/dressed in apron stains”. Pieloor is a poet of gaping losses in ordinary lives; a poet of the irreparable and irreplaceable. Her plain style is sometimes devastating: “Then she knew: he had lived/and she had died.” There are poems of Breaking Up, of mothers and of being a mother. And there are others of visual play that reach back to the 17th century and George Herbert. Surfer is – well – shaped like a surfboard; Sand-time an hourglass. Pieloor is a poet of intelligence and flair, matched to verbal assurance.