{"id":260,"date":"2014-03-05T23:05:01","date_gmt":"2014-03-05T23:05:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnleonardpress.com\/?p=260"},"modified":"2014-03-05T23:33:13","modified_gmt":"2014-03-05T23:33:13","slug":"ocean-island-julian-croft-reviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/johnleonardpress.com\/?p=260","title":{"rendered":"Ocean Island: Reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Martin Duwell,\u00a0Australian Book Review<\/em>, May 2007, p.48:<\/p>\n

\u2018Julian Croft, born in 1941, is a poet whose work deserves a wider audience. This new work,\u00a0Ocean Island<\/em>, is by far the best \u2026 Devourer-of-life and writer-on-sand are two images of the poet, but Croft\u2019s poetry suggests there are many more.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From Felicity Plunkett,\u00a0Cordite<\/em>, www.cordite.org.au:<\/p>\n

\u2018These philosophically alert and emotionally complex poems \u2026 in Julian Croft\u2019s\u00a0Ocean Island<\/em>\u00a0suggest the occluded and multifarious that lies behind the surface, gesturing toward the tidal, and larger worlds that dwarf human concerns.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From Jen Webb,\u00a0Review essay: Poetry in Australia and the John Leonard Press<\/em>,http:\/\/www.textjournal.com.au\/oct08\/webb.htm<\/a><\/p>\n

This is a poet who knows what he\u2019s looking at, and how to see. And in \u2018Making hay\u2019 he discusses the point of poetry, of:<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

the poet not as seer or prophet
\nbut the vacuum-cleaner that sucks up
\nall the dried-out thoughts of others,
\nwatches the galahs roost and waits for dawn,
\nand that fresh incarnation of who we are
\nlit in a new transfiguring light<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

To my mind, this is the coda of the whole collection \u2013 that poetry provides us a way of seeing all the made world as symbol.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I have read a few reviews of this collection, and most point the reader to the truly marvellous \u2018After a war (any war)\u2019 \u2013 which I too recommend. For me, though, his awareness of the workplace is the most trenchant aspect that informs this collection, and a whole world is opened up by, for instance, \u2018Dockyard\u2019:<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

Mother\u2019s sewing room but run by men.
\nFilthy with rust and dust, steel fabric is cut
\nby flaming scissors; sparks, blobs of hot metal
\nglue the gusseted bits, and seams of rivet pins
\nrun round the paunch of the belted keelson<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The factory might resemble a sewing room, but the domestic imagery fades as the poem unfolds, and we see that really, it is a \u2018rough beast, its hour come round at last\u2019.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Martin Duwell,\u00a0Australian Book Review, May 2007, p.48: \u2018Julian Croft, born in 1941, is a poet whose work deserves a wider audience. This new work,\u00a0Ocean Island, is by far the best \u2026 Devourer-of-life and writer-on-sand are two images of the poet, but Croft\u2019s poetry suggests there are many more.\u2019 From Felicity Plunkett,\u00a0Cordite, www.cordite.org.au: \u2018These philosophically […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnleonardpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260"}],"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=260"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/johnleonardpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":262,"href":"http:\/\/johnleonardpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260\/revisions\/262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnleonardpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnleonardpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnleonardpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}