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'Neilsen’s intelligent, searching, and relentlessly contemporary poems in Wildlife of Berlin reveal a poet whose chief interest is transforming and challenging the way we see our human position in a world under ecological and ideological threat. At once philosophical and conversational, deadly serious and unerringly wry, these poems offer us forensically clear-eyed perspectives on subjects ranging from environmental degradation and the impending collapse of fragile ecosystems in the anthropocene, to unconventional and irreverent portraits of figures drawn from literature and politics and beyond. Neilsen’s poems are miraculously both deeply ethical and deeply comic; they surprise and delight with the irreverence of their critiques, while always keeping an eye on the tragic consequences of human folly. Above all, they ask us to sit still, to pay attention, to re-examine our basic precepts with equal measures of reason, wit, imagination and empathy. Wildlife of Berlin is a superbly crafted, incisive and urgent collection of new work from one of Australia’s most original poets, and deserving of the wide audience I am sure it will find. These are necessary poems for incendiary times.
- Sarah Holland-Batt' (Publication summary)
Contents
- Marienplatz - Munichi"While at coffee in the Marienplatz you say that possessions, like regrets, are ridiculous", single work poetry
- Wildlife of Berlin, single work poetry
- Hotel Paris, single work poetry
- Cane Toad, single work poetry
- Americans Are Shooting Elephantsi"A man fat and flushed as a tallow factory", single work poetry
- Anna Kareninai"As the train's breath scoops her up,", single work poetry
- Lady Chatterley, single work poetry
- Sleeping Beauty, single work poetry
- Literary Walking, single work poetry
- Thanotophobia, single work poetry
- Profound Hypothermia, single work poetry
- For Nearly Four Decades He Was Summer, single work poetry
- Suicide, single work poetry
- The Healers Philip Neilsen, single work poetry
- Crowi"Crows are clever.", single work poetry
- Snowy Owli"You know everything", single work poetry
- Auspicesi"Calcas, bird-diviner to Agamemmon", single work poetry
- Butcherbird, single work poetry
- Tawny Frogmouthi"Introverted cousin of the owl", single work poetry
- Pied Currawong, single work poetry
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
-
Thriveni C Mysore Reviews Wildlife of Berlin by Philip Neilsen
2019
single work
review
— Appears in: Plumwood Mountain [Online] , February 2019;
— Review of Wildlife of Berlin 2018 selected work poetry -
The Entanglement of Matter and Meaning
2019
single work
review
— Appears in: TEXT : The Journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs , April vol. 23 no. 1 2019;
— Review of Wildlife of Berlin 2018 selected work poetry -
Philip Neilsen, Wildlife of Berlin
2018
single work
review
— Appears in: Long Paddock , December vol. 78 no. 3 2018;
— Review of Wildlife of Berlin 2018 selected work poetry 'This is a varied book thematically and stylistically, but also one held together by strong threads— climate change, ecology, animals, specific birds, personal reflection on subjectivity and vulnerability, and a perfectly poised irony that has that rare quality of being both empathetic and critical at once. Philip Neilsen is a known satirist, but one who has always had the ability to selfironise, and also critique the ills of the human world whilst being so very human in voice. “He” can both “tell” and observe, can deploy a complex array of emotions within the one poem. There is real grit in these poems—strong beliefs we might say—but also enough self-ironising reflection mixed with a pathos for the circumstances of daily life. The absurdities, the devastating contradictions of a human world that can’t appreciate the implications towards its own health by its mistreatment of animals, and the fraught relationship between the human and “natural world” are concentrated through Philip Neilsen’s obvious sympathies and care for the environment, for ethical human behaviour.' (Introduction) -
Irene Bell Reviews Wildlife of Berlin
2018
single work
review
— Appears in: Rabbit , no. 26 2018; (p. 169-172)
— Review of Wildlife of Berlin 2018 selected work poetry'You will often read reviews praising the poet's 'fresh voice' ; Philip Neilsen, author of the poetry collection Wildlife of Berlin, does not have a fresh voice. The poems in this book re remarkable for their everyday quality. At the risk of likening Neilsen's work to an endlessly infuriating internet cliche, these poems are relatable. They do not feel fresh, the feel like daily life, full of charisma and cynicism. The reader doesn't have to work hard to understand the world Neilsen is describing - we live in it.' (Introduction)
-
[Review] Wildlife of Berlin
2018
single work
review
— Appears in: StylusLit , September no. 4 2018;
— Review of Wildlife of Berlin 2018 selected work poetry'Wildlife of Berlin is Philip Neilsen’s sixth collection of poetry and his veteran experience shows in these superbly-crafted poems about the human / animal interface. Ecopoetics can tend towards the didactic, the maudlin, or the elegiac in response to what seems a dire future. Neilsen’s poems, however, offer redemptive hope for humankind if only we act on the knowledge that our destiny is inextricably bound together with nature’s fate.' (Publication summary)
-
Review Short: Rachael Mead’s The Flaw in the Pattern and Philip Nielsen’s Wildlife of Berlin
2018
single work
review
— Appears in: Cordite Poetry Review , August no. 87 2018;
— Review of The Flaw in the Pattern 2018 selected work poetry ; Wildlife of Berlin 2018 selected work poetry'Holding each of these books is a pleasure. Their two-tone covers have different but complementary botanical design motifs while the master design elements of the UWAP Poetry series, pushing on 23 titles, of which they are part gives them a uniform appearance. They are a credit to Terri-ann White and her team at UWAP in Perth. The miserably small print runs for volumes of poetry often lead to scrimping and saving on design and production, but here at least design costs have been defrayed over the entire series and it pays off in the look of the finished product.' (Introduction)
-
[Review] Wildlife of Berlin
2018
single work
review
— Appears in: StylusLit , September no. 4 2018;
— Review of Wildlife of Berlin 2018 selected work poetry'Wildlife of Berlin is Philip Neilsen’s sixth collection of poetry and his veteran experience shows in these superbly-crafted poems about the human / animal interface. Ecopoetics can tend towards the didactic, the maudlin, or the elegiac in response to what seems a dire future. Neilsen’s poems, however, offer redemptive hope for humankind if only we act on the knowledge that our destiny is inextricably bound together with nature’s fate.' (Publication summary)
-
Irene Bell Reviews Wildlife of Berlin
2018
single work
review
— Appears in: Rabbit , no. 26 2018; (p. 169-172)
— Review of Wildlife of Berlin 2018 selected work poetry'You will often read reviews praising the poet's 'fresh voice' ; Philip Neilsen, author of the poetry collection Wildlife of Berlin, does not have a fresh voice. The poems in this book re remarkable for their everyday quality. At the risk of likening Neilsen's work to an endlessly infuriating internet cliche, these poems are relatable. They do not feel fresh, the feel like daily life, full of charisma and cynicism. The reader doesn't have to work hard to understand the world Neilsen is describing - we live in it.' (Introduction)
-
The Entanglement of Matter and Meaning
2019
single work
review
— Appears in: TEXT : The Journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs , April vol. 23 no. 1 2019;
— Review of Wildlife of Berlin 2018 selected work poetry -
Philip Neilsen, Wildlife of Berlin
2018
single work
review
— Appears in: Long Paddock , December vol. 78 no. 3 2018;
— Review of Wildlife of Berlin 2018 selected work poetry 'This is a varied book thematically and stylistically, but also one held together by strong threads— climate change, ecology, animals, specific birds, personal reflection on subjectivity and vulnerability, and a perfectly poised irony that has that rare quality of being both empathetic and critical at once. Philip Neilsen is a known satirist, but one who has always had the ability to selfironise, and also critique the ills of the human world whilst being so very human in voice. “He” can both “tell” and observe, can deploy a complex array of emotions within the one poem. There is real grit in these poems—strong beliefs we might say—but also enough self-ironising reflection mixed with a pathos for the circumstances of daily life. The absurdities, the devastating contradictions of a human world that can’t appreciate the implications towards its own health by its mistreatment of animals, and the fraught relationship between the human and “natural world” are concentrated through Philip Neilsen’s obvious sympathies and care for the environment, for ethical human behaviour.' (Introduction) -
Philip Neilsen : Wildlife of Berlin
2018
single work
essay
— Appears in: Australian Poetry Review , vol. 13 no. 2018;'Many of the themes of Neilsen’s excellent Without an Alibi get revisited in this new book, some ten years on. Above all there is the repeated invocation of the natural world as simultaneously a place of danger and a place of imaginative freedom. It is also a world in danger as it is vulnerable to the various processes of reduction: these include obvious things like poisoning and clearing but also the subtler processes of being turned into museum and media subjects. You get some sense of this in the first poem of Wildlife of Berlin, “Marienplatz – Munich” which makes a nice link with the poems of the previous book as well as introducing the sort of material which will figure in this present one. It belongs to a Neilsenian genre that might be called “Recollections of experiences with ex-lovers overseas”. The poet recalls a Munich visit and being lectured to by his partner who tells him that both possessions and regrets are ridiculous. The environment is packed with possessions that humans have taken from the natural world:
. . . . .
'At the Museum of Hunting the stairwells
are studded with antlers and heads, the floors
patrolled by brown bears, wolves and a lynx,
their Waldgeist stolen by some taxidermist . . .' (Introduction)
