'Readers of Aileen Kelly's earlier books will recognise that in these final poems she is at the height of her power. The poems are abrupt, distilled and beautifully rhythmed. Life is her object and her passion, as always. The language has the essential autonomy of poetry, and yet these poems are directly personal, involving family and friends, their bodies and her own, and her own experience among delicately defined landscapes. Inevitably, it seems, poem after poem is also metaphysical, and socially aware. Perhaps the briefest description, however, is the best: here is wit and imagination.' (Publication Summary)
'This is the last collection by a major Australian poet, and it is a firework in the tightness and effervescence of its poems. Like Aileen Kelly’s previous book, The Passion Paintings: Poems 1983-2006, it concentrates the work of many years. Unlike that book, however, this one was assembled and edited after its author’s death in 2011: firstly by her husband, Paul Grundy, and then by Catherine Bateson and Joanne Lee Dow. At that stage, the text was finalised by Dow and editor, critic and anthologist, John Leonard, who had been Kelly’s mentor for some years and whose press had published her previous book.' (Introduction)
'This is the last collection by a major Australian poet, and it is a firework in the tightness and effervescence of its poems. Like Aileen Kelly’s previous book, The Passion Paintings: Poems 1983-2006, it concentrates the work of many years. Unlike that book, however, this one was assembled and edited after its author’s death in 2011: firstly by her husband, Paul Grundy, and then by Catherine Bateson and Joanne Lee Dow. At that stage, the text was finalised by Dow and editor, critic and anthologist, John Leonard, who had been Kelly’s mentor for some years and whose press had published her previous book.' (Introduction)
