{"id":312,"date":"2014-03-05T23:26:47","date_gmt":"2014-03-05T23:26:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnleonardpress.com\/?p=312"},"modified":"2014-03-05T23:29:33","modified_gmt":"2014-03-05T23:29:33","slug":"the-incoming-tide-reviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/johnleonardpress.com\/?p=312","title":{"rendered":"The Incoming Tide: Reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shortlisted for Judith Wright Calanthe Prize 2007. Judges\u2019 comments:<\/p>\n

\u2018This is a stunning first book by a poet who has bypassed the usual hallmarks of a \u201cyoung writer\u201d and emerged with a fully formed voice and startling ease of style. Petra White\u2019s book eschews the seductions of self-referentiality and language games. She is present in all her poems, but deeply integrated, her concern being to connect with others and the environment with unfailing intelligence, ironic humour, originality of image and acute observation.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From Martin Duwell,\u00a0http:\/\/www.australianpoetryreview.com.au\/0709white.htm<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2018This is a very accomplished and very complex first book by a poet who can be said to be, already, of considerable importance.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From Andrew Sant,\u00a0Australian Book Review<\/em>, October 2007, p.47:<\/p>\n

\u2018 \u201cMunich\u201d is a poem of considerable poise, dignity, tenderness and technical accomplishment. . . . Surprises and pleasures abound. It is not attention-seeking poetry that endeavours to collar the reader; rather, it elicits attention via its radiant intelligence and unpredictable wit.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From Geoff Page,\u00a0The Canberra Times<\/em>, October 13 2007:<\/p>\n

\u2018[The Incoming Tide<\/em>] ranges widely in subject matter and style. . . . all distinguished by a feeling of necessity, a sense that this particular poem could not be left unwritten. . . . There really isn\u2019t an unsuccessful poem in the book \u2013 which, for a first book, is saying something.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From Lyn McCredden,\u00a0The Age<\/em>, Saturday July 5, 2008:<\/p>\n

\u2018One way to describe the cumulative effect of her poems is to say that you learn, as you read, to trust deeply this voice and the emotional richness that reveals itself to you slowly, steadily and uncompromisingly.
\nIn \u2018Kangaroos\u2019 we have absolutely the right words to capture the presence of these iconic animals . . . \u2018Grave\u2019, sitting in the middle of the collection, begins with a headstone and an ageing photograph of a colonial child, \u2018finished or not\u2019 at the Melbourne General Cemetery. The poem becomes the occasion for a poetic meditation on history, a past of faithful believers. . . . Belief and doubt stand beside each other, made to ponder the odds of a divine \u201cthought, barely formed\u201d ever being pronounced.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From Heather Taylor Johnson,\u00a0Wet Ink<\/em>, Issue 11, 2008:<\/p>\n

\u2018The twelve part \u2018Highway\u2019 is nothing short of brilliant. The poems inside the larger poem map a trail of the Eyre Highway and the outcome is a collage of stark images, lingering sensations and arresting memories. Again this feels like an other world shaped by the poet and so it seems almost mythical, entirely imagined. Yet what I ultimately got out \u2018Highway\u2019 was a strong sense of appreciation that could only have been lived and felt.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is an exciting new poet; certainly one to watch. For me,\u00a0The Incoming Tide\u00a0<\/em>left footprints.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From Jen Webb, Review essay:\u00a0Poetry in Australia and the John Leonard Press<\/em>,http:\/\/www.textjournal.com.au\/oct08\/webb.htm<\/a>\u00a0, 2008:<\/p>\n

This is a lovely collection of poems: alive in every line, finely honed, full of close observations. Listen to these lines (from \u2018Bunda cliffs\u2019):<\/p>\n

The shelved-in sea hived with diagonals,
\nverticals, horizontals, slabs of sleek water
\nferrying hazes of air in its crystal,
\nvapouring the desert\u2019s tongue.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You need to say the lines out loud, feel the words and their patterns of vowel and consonant on your tongue. This is a poet who is not afraid: she uses words like \u2018diagonals\u2019 without turning a hair; she uses \u2018axolotl\u2019, such an awkward term, in a poem that is a paean to sisterhood; and though there is no sense of the sibling relationship through most of the poem, at the end it falls into place:<\/p>\n

\u2026 more
\nthan the ailing tabby, the timorous
\nand watchful high-heeled dog, or the rented
\nfireprone house, he guards our dangerous
\nchildhood pledge to never change<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And see, in that last phrase: she\u2019s not afraid of splitting an infinitive either. Poetic licence.<\/p>\n

I am captivated by these poems, by their clanging internal sounds, by their unexpected stories, by their attention to embodiment. Much of it shouldn\u2019t work; but it does. The poems to her grandmothers, for instance, evoke worlds, call up relationships, are full of tenderness and rejection. In the poem \u2018Munich\u2019, her grandmother continues to haunt the poetic persona: she has not gone gentle into that good night:<\/p>\n

\u2026 she \u2013 just-vanished \u2013 seems everywhere.
\nShe didn\u2019t entirely want to be remembered,
\nno grave, no plaque.
\nHer memories, freed from her head,
\nswarming in mine, or some of them:<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and this continual haunting is perhaps because:<\/p>\n

She died alive, her last words on waking,
\nIt\u2019s not a dream, is it?<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The lack of a certain space between here and there, self and other, appears and reappears throughout the collection: the being-there\/being absent while in the workplace, the synthetic community produced by the electronic bulletin board in \u2018Southbank\u2019 (actually, I think I used to work there; it certainly rings some bells). Then there\u2019s the lost and found child in \u2018Bunda Cliff\u2019; the fact that \u2018death looks momentary\u2019 in \u2018Kangaroos\u2019: nothing is stable, nothing is as it seems, and the walls between here and there are always permeable.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shortlisted for Judith Wright Calanthe Prize 2007. Judges\u2019 comments: \u2018This is a stunning first book by a poet who has bypassed the usual hallmarks of a \u201cyoung writer\u201d and emerged with a fully formed voice and startling ease of style. Petra White\u2019s book eschews the seductions of self-referentiality and language games. She is present in […]<\/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\/312"}],"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=312"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/johnleonardpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":313,"href":"http:\/\/johnleonardpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312\/revisions\/313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnleonardpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnleonardpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnleonardpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}