AustLit

'Winner of the 2008 IP Picks Best First Book Award. An impressive first poetry collection that traverses time and place with ease. Acute in her ability to juxtapose cultures in a breath, Gleeson is as much at ease adopting a perspective on Tongan women as the wife of the Desert Fox, Irwin Rommel. ‘In the poems of Anne Gleeson, memory is transformed into memorable speech. With wit and passion, skill and fellow feeling, the fragmentations of the past are made whole through a re-imagining as poetry. In Between the Dancing is the premier of a new poet, a first book that is as premier as it is memorable.’ – Paul Kane, Antipodes'

'Put The Billy On gives us insights into what it was like to grow up in Australia in the 1930s and 40s. The story is mixed with undertones of delightful humour and fading innocence. Historical events, such as the lead up to World War II, are artfully compared to the tensions in the speaker's own life. Ann Jones invites us to reflect on how far we've come, and the precious things that may have been lost on the way.' (Source: On-line)

'Winner, Best First Book, IP Picks 2006. The Accidental Cage explores the perceptual and emotional experience of entrapment in its many forms. Exile, asylum, desire, love and motherhood all enter the speaker s imagination, often transformed by the force of resistance. The poems are nuanced, balancing a dramatic tension between the beauty of the metaphor and the impact of the meaning. The collection compiles longer meditations with shorter lyrical and imagistic poetry. This is an absorbing collection that weds classical metaphor and lyricism with contemporary voices and themes, while exploring a range of form. Essential for libraries and schools to widen their poetry collections.' (Publication summary)