'In this poetry collection, Crossing a Line, Hermina Burns reflects on the difficulty, the necessity, and the responsibility of loving country. At the heart of this collection, her third, is a woman's relationship through time with the landscape she inhabits, the landscape of her birth country. These poems confront obvious alterations across the Australian landscape, and evidence of human-induced changes in the climate. Drawing on a lifetime of memories and experience, these poems inquire into the human tendency to not see the consequences of clearing land and fauna; the tendency to maintain an impression of continuance despite being contradicted by reality. Some poems are elegies for aspects of our world already lost; some are lyrical about what particular landscapes still bring to our lives; others in this collection, her third, press us to attend in the present and consider, as individuals, our part in what is happening and our personal responsibility to the earth.'
Source : publisher's blurb
'Well before the pandemic, the future for poetry’s slim volumes was looking far from healthy. Last November, the threatened closure of UWA Press, one of the largest publishers of poetry in Australia, drew attention to the narrowing opportunities for emerging poets to make their mark. The venerable Griffin Press, however, now under the Ovato umbrella, remains in the business of fostering ‘untried authors’.' (Introduction)
'Well before the pandemic, the future for poetry’s slim volumes was looking far from healthy. Last November, the threatened closure of UWA Press, one of the largest publishers of poetry in Australia, drew attention to the narrowing opportunities for emerging poets to make their mark. The venerable Griffin Press, however, now under the Ovato umbrella, remains in the business of fostering ‘untried authors’.' (Introduction)
