AustLit

'Net Needle is the first stand-alone collection of new poems since The Goldfinches of Baghdad (2006) and the first full-length since Adamson published his selected poems thematically for The Golden Bird (2008). It is tempting to wonder whether reimagining his past work was a prelude to this new collection. Net Needle is a highly organized, living composition which interrogates language, poetics, trauma and mortality within a framework focused on limits and continuities. The abstract is voiced in a fresh and vital lyric that is passionately engaged and often evokes the natural world. The two words of the title work hard. Net Needle connotes thingness, the interdependence of tool and artefact, tradition, yet deconstructed the title can be read as two verbs.' (Introduction)