AustLit

'L.K. Holt’s sixth collection of poetry, Three Books, opens with Merry War (of never meeting and never ending), Holt’s liberal translations of 14th-century Persian poet Jahan Malek Khatun and of the first-century BCE Roman poet Catullus, presented contrapuntally on facing pages. The second book-within-a-book is Nina in the Hag Mask, an array of prose poems, sonnets, further translations and taut experimental lyrics. The third, April, is a single – and singular – long prose poem, tracing the meandering reflections of April and her friend June, interrupted by the “noisy data” of their experience and by Holt’s loose translations of excerpts from Anton Chekhov’s novella The Steppe.' (Introduction)