Robert Adamson (1) (1943–2022)

http://shawjonathan.wordpress.com/2010/04/06/adamsons-best-of-2009/

This is an excellent anthology. In fact, in the context of previous years’ round-ups, both from Black Inc and UQP, it’s a strong contender for Best of the Best. It includes a wonderful range of poetic styles and modes and subjects – incomprehensible post-modern stuff, impassioned story-telling, linguistic virtuosity, delicate lyric. There’s Clive James’s assured iambic pentameter, Pam Brown’s asthmatically short show more lines, Ali Cobby Eckermann’s lines you might need to know didgeridoo breathing to recite adequately. In the introduction, Robert Adamson talks about his solution to the difficulty of reducing his short list to fit the space available – he persuaded Black Inc to give him more space. I’m glad he did, and that he kept commentary, analysis and explanation to a bare minimum.

I’m not going to try to name the poems I liked best. My copy has far too many page-corners turned down for that.

I was struck by the sense of community among the poets, particularly as shown in the number of poems honouring those who have died: Dorothy Porter (‘Word‘ by Martin Harrison), but also John Forbes (‘Letter to John Forbes‘ by Laurie Duggan0, Jan McKemmish (Pam Brown’s ‘Blue Glow‘), Francis Webb (‘Reading Francis Webb‘, by Philip Salom [the link is to a PDF]) and Bruce Beaver (a couple of mentions, but mainly Peter Rose’s beautiful imitation, ‘Morbid Transfers‘).

Buying this book in March felt a little bit silly, like buying hot cross buns in July, but it turns out it’s not a seasonal thing at all. It’s an anthology that I’m sure I’ll go back to.

Tara Mokhtari on the Overland blog puts a completely different view at http://web.overland.org.au/2010/04/08/review-%E2%80%93-the-best-australian-poems.... She does identify herself as a ’shunned poet’. show less

I expect to reread the first two sections of this many times. These poems, almost all of them featuring birds, the Hawkesbury River and fishing by night, just picked me up and took me with them: the word that comes to my mind for the interplay of real birds, the real river and what the poet's mind makes of them is 'charming', as in having magical force.