\u00a0<\/span>is also of course the volume\u2019s title, naming the spirit of urgency in even her quietest language here.<\/p>\nIn these narrative meditations, White\u2019s poetic gift and its broadening scope of styles and questionings are manifest – her tones able to slip delicately between irony and cut-through joy or bleakness. Beneath the sketch of an occasion, the emotions and rhythmic movements are complex, ever shifting with the movement of thought. The founding gestures driving this are vivid observation and memory (personal and literary) with point of view often quietly altering within a poem. The result is poems that are as mysterious as they are clear.<\/p>\n
Generally, the tone has a personal feel, but this is tempered. White uses \u2018I\u2019 only sparingly. In poems about childhood, youth, workplaces and much else she is more interested in the nature of an experience than ownership of it, which gives the poetry fair room to play. Her concern is to say something about our time and place, with the surprise of its opening out to worlds of otherness. Some poems turn to the shadows of depression, touching on how depression dwells, finding its register so it can speak. A place where \u2018I\u2019 does have prominence is in the shock of the opening sequence of love poems. There the poet co-opts the usually male Petrarchan conceit of a lover\u2019s introspection into the subtle agony of feelings.<\/p>\n
Her free-verse vigour has at the back of it the ghost of pentameter\u2019s gift for cadence and phrasing. She writes odes, elegies, lyric sequences, compact near-sonnets – the flexing of line upon line playing into the mind\u2019s play, making poetry\u2019s invitation to be uttered. The inherent freshness in Petra White\u2019s poetry – its thought, its imagery, and its language – is tangible in that invitation.<\/p>\n
This Revised Edition of A Hunger<\/em> (2018) omits one poem. Six poems are revised, slightly or substantially.<\/p>\n\\\\
\n[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.22″][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_4,1_4,1_4,1_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”1_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_image src=”http:\/\/johnleonardpress.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/AHungerCover\u2022RevisedEdition\u20222018-1-scaled.jpg” title_text=”Print” align_tablet=”center” align_phone=”” align_last_edited=”on|desktop” _builder_version=”4.5.1″][\/et_pb_image][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.5.1″ hover_enabled=”0″] This is a selection of Poems from A Hunger: Revised Edition. [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”3.25″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.5.1″ hover_enabled=”0″] ISBN:\u00a0978-0-646-98446-9 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnleonardpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1016"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnleonardpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnleonardpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnleonardpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnleonardpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1016"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/johnleonardpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1135,"href":"http:\/\/johnleonardpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1016\/revisions\/1135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnleonardpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnleonardpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnleonardpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}