'Praise for Snake Like Charms:
'Amanda Joy’s first full-scale book Snake Like Charms was five years in the making. It’s grounded deep in reality as are the snake cultures and legends it draws from. Amanda Joy is a poet from the Pilbara and Kimberley regions of Western Australia, origin of the Rainbow Serpent, the Great Spirit that represents the world’s oldest religious tradition. According to Indigenous song-cycles, a snake literally created this country. These lines from the poem ‘Your Ground’ carry their wisdom lightly “snake says / be still / stand your ground / it's the only protection we have’.' (Publication summary)
For my parents, John and Sally, who gifted me a nomadic
childhood in the Pilbara and Kimberley, and also for Tim
and all the Healy Road Tuart Lovers.
'Snake Like Charms is a debut book that writhes in the reader's hand, lively and lovely. My pen underlined so many passages like a skin, black python stretching across the page. The book explores family and relationships, self and identity, culture and country through the snake motif and Joy's languid use of language.' (Introduction)
'The chapbook is the ideal public presentation of poetry for the times in which we live. It is even more portable than the conventionally slim collection; its humbler production values permit poets to get their work ‘out there’, thereby meeting the democratic criterion of accessibility for both poet and reader, and it is conducive to the rigours of thematic focus that a small body of work encourages. Long may it flourish.' (Introduction)
'Snake Like Charms is a debut book that writhes in the reader's hand, lively and lovely. My pen underlined so many passages like a skin, black python stretching across the page. The book explores family and relationships, self and identity, culture and country through the snake motif and Joy's languid use of language.' (Introduction)
'The chapbook is the ideal public presentation of poetry for the times in which we live. It is even more portable than the conventionally slim collection; its humbler production values permit poets to get their work ‘out there’, thereby meeting the democratic criterion of accessibility for both poet and reader, and it is conducive to the rigours of thematic focus that a small body of work encourages. Long may it flourish.' (Introduction)
