''This is an outstanding volume of poetry. It is wonderfully original and deliciously complex. Its intellectual pirouettes and cutbacks are a pleasure to follow, always offering an incredibly agile and aesthetically stimulating journey. With brio and wit, Coleman's poems jag through various allusions, from computer games to Shakespeare, from reality TV to Blue Light Discos. In lesser hands such a dizzying array of references could lead to a kind of vertigo or even a sense of self-indulgent over-referencing. Yet Coleman's omnivorous poems handle disparate elements superbly, holding an openness in tension with their erudite clarity.' - Lachlan Brown
''These poems of great architectural skill and precision are small houses (nothing in excess) of scrutiny - what is watched on the television, what is read in print and on the screen, is analysed in the context of "responsibility". Wry, aphoristic, compiled brick by brick, expression by expression, each poem accords with and flouts the regulations at once - that is, this immaculate crafter of the poem also questions the propaganda of prosody and poetics. Smart, learned, and ironic, the work leads us through the artifice of art and aesthetics, confronting our cultural certainties and pre-judgements. Satire with compassion, wit with deep insight. His is a unique voice.' - John Kinsella' (Publication summary)
'Aidan Coleman’s first book, Avenues & Runways, is an example of a comparatively rare thing in Australian poetry: something in the minimalist tradition. To risk a gross generalisation, Australian poetry, viewed from a very distant perspective, does seem word- and assertion- heavy as though, in a country with a very small audience and a fairly low professional standing, poetry and poets have to be seen to be working hard and producing nice thick texts. What subtle suggestivenesses there are are likely to be framed by dense text. Avenues & Runways belonged, I think, to a sub-branch of this minimalist mode which is usually called Imagism. The word (and, probably, the mode) was invented by Ezra Pound in 1915 and he is responsible for one of the examples that all poetry readers know: “In a Station of the Metro”.' (Introduction)
'Aidan Coleman’s first book, Avenues & Runways, is an example of a comparatively rare thing in Australian poetry: something in the minimalist tradition. To risk a gross generalisation, Australian poetry, viewed from a very distant perspective, does seem word- and assertion- heavy as though, in a country with a very small audience and a fairly low professional standing, poetry and poets have to be seen to be working hard and producing nice thick texts. What subtle suggestivenesses there are are likely to be framed by dense text. Avenues & Runways belonged, I think, to a sub-branch of this minimalist mode which is usually called Imagism. The word (and, probably, the mode) was invented by Ezra Pound in 1915 and he is responsible for one of the examples that all poetry readers know: “In a Station of the Metro”.' (Introduction)
