AustLit

'As happens most years, there was a good haul of collections with energy, sustained craft and distinctive perspectives. Nothing explosive - no first performances of 'The Rite of Spring' - but poetry doesn't operate like that. It emerges, rather, through the bubbling accretion of the work of poets maturing at different times, pursuing different possibilities and inventing different styles to articulate them with. There were a small number of high-profile selections this year, such as Sarah Holland-Batt's excellent 'The Jaguar', a handful of Selecteds surveying the poetry of some who have been at the coalface for many decades - Alan Wearne, Jill Jones, Andrew Taylor - together with the regular offering of ambitious and thoughtful collections such as the books reviewed here, which inevitably only represent a selection of those that deserve attention.' 

(Publication abstract)