'When I edited Black Inc’s Best Australian Poems in the immediate wake of 9/11 I was struck by how much our poets were alive to the impact of world-shattering events and how capable they were of finding a voice for the bewilderment of a terrible time. And no poet is more darkly informed than Jennifer Maiden. She can dramatise how political insights and intimations can twist and turn in a mind, and she can reconfigure worlds of feeling and reference into a poetic speech that is nimble, ornery, but in every way her own.' (Introduction)