AustLit

'2015 was “a standout year for the publishing of contemporary Australian poetry” in the view of reviewer Jacina Le Plastrier (Australian Book Review 377 December). Robert Adamson’s spectacular poetic career has led The Times Literary Supplement to describe him as “One of the finest Australian poets at work today” and he has recently been awarded a Chair in Poetry at University of Technology, Sydney. His latest collection, Net Needle, includes the winner of the 2011 William Blake Prize, “Via Negativa, The Divine Dark” in Part One of the collection. Part Two is, in the words of Geoff Page, “a vintage collection of autobiographical poems” which is “probably the book’s high point”; Part Three is a series of literary tributes to various poets while Part Four is “more miscellaneous … culminating in the important poem ‘The Kingfisher’s Soul’” (SMH 16 May 2015). Expressing an equally enthusiastic response to the collection, reviewer A. J. Carruthers observes that Adamson “has worked in both experimental and romantic styles” and reflects the influence of Robert Duncan and Robert Creeley, but “Adamson is at his best when he eschews the romanticism of conventional verse style and explores the grittiness, impurity, and sheer difficulty of language” (ABR 377 December). Page concurs in this view, declaring that Adamson is at “his most characteristic and memorable” when his work involves “gritty realism with a lyrical edge; the ‘hands-on’ knowledge of a physical craft; the opening-out into wider implications about people’s emotional lives” (SMH 16 May). (Introduction)'