Salt Modern Poets
1 total work
In these `New and Selected Poems' Glen Phillips has three basic themes-scenes from Shanghai life in today's China, ancient granite landscapes of Western Australia and travelling in Australia and Italy.
All these poems were part of a major presentation by the author, which won him a PhD in 2006: "Land Whisperings and a Poetics of Newplace and Birthplace". As one examiner put it, ` I feel that, as much more a reader than a writer of poetry myself, I can offer nothing but unqualified praise. Almost at random I could pluck out "Holding Stone in Your Hand" as an example of a poem that, in the very simplest of language, manages to unsettle the world and all who inhabit that world.'
Here there are poems to appeal to a multitude of readers-strange `honey men' on the streets of Shanghai, mysteries of the Aboriginal `gnamma holes' in the desert; John Cage's abstract music or the weird salt lake sculptures of Antony Gormley near Kalgoorlie are unexpected and challenging topics; a stormy day on Dartmoor or summer torrents in the Lombardy Alps contrast with tropical deluges in Kakadu, or a foggy night in downtown China. Traditional classic forms exist side by side with free verse and the lyrical poems co-exist with unusual stories.
Poetry of landscape and love abound in Phillips' book and confirms the truth of the title's teasing claim-imagination is unbounded.