{"id":1766,"date":"2025-10-16T18:19:24","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T18:19:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/?p=1766"},"modified":"2025-11-22T09:56:02","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T09:56:02","slug":"vanessa-proctors-2024-debut-poetry-collection-on-wonder-reviewed-by-samantha-sirimanne-hyde-grattan-street-press","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/2025\/10\/16\/vanessa-proctors-2024-debut-poetry-collection-on-wonder-reviewed-by-samantha-sirimanne-hyde-grattan-street-press\/","title":{"rendered":"Vanessa Proctor’s collection ‘On Wonder’ | review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Samantha Sirimanne Hyde <\/strong>has penned a laudatory review of Vanessa Proctor’s Dec 2024 poetry collection On Wonder<\/em><\/a>, at Grattan Street Press<\/a> (29th September, 2025).<\/p>\n

The Japanese perception of sadness, particularly a tender, contemplative sadness, is often defined by the term \u2018mono no aware\u2019.\u00a0This is often rendered as the pathos or frailty of all things: an understanding of the impermanence of all matter and the wistful reaction that comes from its acceptance. Proctor\u2019s\u00a0poetry is often touched with this leitmotif of finding beauty in what\u2019s blemished, fragile or ephemeral. For instance, cherry blossoms, which epitomise beauty, transience and renewal in Japanese culture, are depicted in the poem, \u201cThe Scattering of Blossom\u201d, shifting between life and death, beauty, sorrow and acceptance. The poem moves from Australia, where the cherry trees bloom along Sakura Avenue \u201cat the old POW camp in Cowra\u201d, a resting place for over two hundred Japanese soldiers \u201cbeneath a foreign soil\u201d, to Rikugien Gardens in Japan, where the poet reflects on the pale pink blossoms and the impending birth of her child, and finally to a snapshot of luminous flowering wild cherry trees in the foothills of the Himalayas.<\/p>\n

Proctor encourages the reader to look more deeply at the world and at ourselves with kindness and compassion, celebrating our interconnectedness with one another and with nature.\u00a0On Wonder<\/em>\u00a0is a book of understated elegance with comforting alchemy, a collection to be savoured time and time again.<\/p>\n

\n

Sri Lankan born\u00a0Samantha Sirimanne Hyde<\/strong>\u00a0lives in the unceded land of the Wallumedegal people in NSW. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from Macquarie University. Her collection of 20 short stories is called\u00a0The Villawood Express & other stories<\/em>\u00a0and over 300 of her haiku and tanka have appeared in poetry journals. Her debut novel,\u00a0The Lyrebird\u2019s Cry<\/em>, is a tale of self-discovery of a gay man trapped into an arranged marriage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Samantha Sirimanne Hyde has penned a laudatory review of Vanessa Proctor’s Dec 2024 poetry collection On Wonder, at Grattan Street Press (29th September, 2025). The Japanese perception of sadness, particularly … Continue reading “Vanessa Proctor’s collection ‘On Wonder’ | review”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[345,344,2,38,317],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grattan-street-press","category-hyde-samantha","category-poetry","category-poetry-collections","category-proctor-vanessa"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1766"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1790,"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1766\/revisions\/1790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}