AustLit

'Graeme Hetherington’s ninth collection of poems portrays the poet’s troubled journey to escape an ‘afflicted self ’shadowed with loneliness and paranoia. During the journey, the poet feels ‘twisted and deformed ’as he confronts a personal sense of psychological dislocation – a divided personality and confused sexual identity. Such feelings are the poet’s ‘demons of despair ’that prompt in him a sense of complete dispossession, emptiness and rejection of humankind. No matter how long the journey and how far from the past the poet travels, he is trapped and haunted by these demons whose power colours the diction and imagery of his poetry. Tautly crafted short stanzas with references and images connoting blackness, punishment and curse, such as Mount Black’s shadows on Tasmania’s West Coast, the cat-o’-nine-tails, Coleridge’s albatross and the scourge of Christ’s crucifixion, convey the depth of the poet’s despair. Despite the poet’s desire to escape the ‘darkness of the past’, the reader senses that the power of his personal psychological drama will challenge his search for transcendence. The poet will certainly continue to seek poems that ‘soar beyond ’the theatre of the self, but they will provide perhaps only temporary respite as he continues to experience personal uncertainties and pain.' (Publication summary)