AustLit

'In this, his fifth full-sized collection, Paul Cliff evokes the city of Canberra and surrounding region, where he has lived for the past 20 years. The poems work via characteristically wide-ranging moods and voice registers, from lyrical and elegiac to narrative and comic. They also deploy a variety of forms, from sonnets and odes to fables and epigrams, underlain by seductive rhythms and arresting metaphor. The capital's festivals, institutions and monuments, everyday street life, suburbs, and lakescape are investigated, while the more distant terrains of Weereewa (Lake George), Namadgi, the Monaro, the Snowy Mountains, and the South Coast of New South Wales are also evoked in engaging and often striking terms.' (Publication summary)

'Things that get in through the gap in the pole and sheet-iron fence that separates us from the besser-block compound next door include a clutter of chooks, to scrabble up God knows what from our gravel yard; three mongrel dogs, to sprawl on the old, chewed-up vinyl couch upon our back porch; and seven little Dili girls.' (Introduction)

Paul Cliff's sixth collection, consolidates and extends the range of his previous work, with diverse themes touching on popular culture, the political versus private worlds, rural and urban locations; artistic, literary and historical figures; the craft of writing and editing; rites of passage (illness, ageing, death); animals, and travel. And on the sometimes surprising interconnection of these. Poems assume an array of forms including dramatic monologues, lyrics, elegies, sonnets, haiku, epigrams, ekphrastic pieces and prose poems — all underpinned by the observant eye, verbal inventiveness, infectious sense of play, swinging rhythms and striking imagery which critics have noted in his earlier collections.