AustLit

'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)