Issue Details: First known date: 2022... 2022 Consoled by Language : Sarah Holland-Batt’s Third Collection
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'I first encountered Sarah Holland-Batt’s poem ‘The Gift’ in The New Yorker. It begins, ‘In the garden my father sits in his wheelchair / garlanded by summer hibiscus / like a saint in a seventeenth-century cartouche’ – an unremarkable opening, I thought, to a poem of personal anecdote, a genre too ubiquitous among our contemporaries. Rereading the poem in the context of her third collection, The Jaguar, I became acclimated to her style and manner, and admired the alertness of its verbal performance. If the new book remains a personal memoir, narrating the devastating illness and death of her father, it is also charged throughout with a strong writer’s intelligence and vulnerability. ‘I will carry the gift of his death endlessly,’ she writes, ‘every day I will know it opening in me.’' (Introduction)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Australian Book Review no. 443 June 2022 24657601 2022 periodical issue

    'That there will no second term for the Morrison government will mean for many a winter of milder discontent. The subject of changing course looms large over our June issue, from John Harwood’s reconsideration of his mother Gwen Harwood’s legacy (making possible a new biography of the poet, also reviewed in this issue) to Linda Atkins’ refocusing of attention to wider social problems in the abortion debate. Elizabeth Tynan gives a timely reminder of the historic costs of colonial servility, while Ilana Snyder looks at the unrealised potential of the Gonski education reforms. In fiction, we review new titles by Douglas Stuart, Steve Toltz, Felicity McLean, and Ceridwen Dovey and Eliza Bell, while in poetry, we look at the latest by Sarah Holland-Batt, Emily Stewart, and Claire Potter. The inimitable Frances Wilson is our Critic of the Month. From convicts to caca (ahem), there’s plenty in store for the polymorphously curious!'  (Publication summary)

    2022
    pg. 46, 48
Last amended 7 Jun 2022 09:02:13
46, 48 https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/abr-online/archive/2022/june-2022-no-443/978-june-2022-no-443/9208-david-mason-reviews-the-jaguar-by-sarah-holland-batt Consoled by Language : Sarah Holland-Batt’s Third Collectionsmall AustLit logo Australian Book Review
Review of:
  • The Jaguar Sarah Holland-Batt 2022 selected work poetry
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