AustLit

'The Uncertainty Principle is a thoughtful collection of poems based on the author’s experience and broad learning. Chris Wallace-Crabbe (founding director of the Australian Centre and, more recently, chair of the peak artistic body, Australian Poetry Limited) in his testimonial for the book, wrote the following: “Acute, concise and frequently aqueous, these poems always welcome the reader’s intelligence. Experience bears in on Paul Dolphin, yet he is not overborne. He is a sane, worldly poet for whom “Even fibro softens at the edge of night” and in whose lyric eloquence there is delight, again and yet again.” This book of poetry walks the fluid line between the obscureness of some modern poetry, and the more plainly nuanced of narrative writings. These poems are, as Chris Wallace-Crabbe described, worldly, acute, and with a lyric eloquence. It seems the softest thing: this gentle pain, invading slowly as the quiet wash of air that brings the season from a colder south, where time compressed to wind itself as long-drawn hours stretched tight reaches the horizon of all events. Facets of life, and philosophy, are examined without unnecessary obfuscation or poetic elitism, which gives the book a broad appeal.' (Publication summary)