'In axolotl waltz, Nathan Shepherdson steers a rusty trolley with its wobbly wheel as he haunts the aisles in the Supermarket of Casual Koans (SOCK). What he can't find, he invents, or at other times puts items back he bought months ago, on their same shelf, unopened. Shepherdson is perhaps an outlier in Australian Poetry â" grows his own punctuation, turns water into accidental wit, stares at the seeds of random ideas with a synthetic light in his eyes. Yet he understands that shadows are the perfect fabric for a new suit or old clothes. It seems the shooting stars he's looking for have blown their headlights. Although he knows they are out there. There is a quiet darkness he weighs by the gram. He understands you need to throw the thing away in order to keep it. Earnestness is not a tune he can hold. Shepherdson has been known to patrol his own thoughts, half a full stop on his head. When he sees he's in trouble he calls out to himself, dives in to save himself, then somehow manages to drag himself (plus the odd poem) back to shore. He lives in the constant reminder of his parent's example, when as a child, they explained to him, "If you have a feather and a stone, you have an alphabet."' (Publication summary)
'Reading axolotl waltz feels a little like stepping into a painting by René Magritte or some similarly surreal universe. Challenging to fathom at times, Nathan Shepherdson’s poems here are also curiously absorbing, strange yet intimate, poignant yet playful and often subtly humorous. Some capture paradox, like the poem addressed to Ariel Shepherdson, beginning “I cannot be here until I leave” [85]. Other poems switch from human perspectives to objects, as in ‘the unconsumed apple’, which refers to the poisoned apple that J. Robert Oppenheimer briefly intended for his tutor Patrick Blackett [15-17], or ‘notes taken by a doll in Vienna’ [51-52], based on Oscar Kokoschka’s lithography and his life size doll of Alma Mahler. Many of the poems in this superb collection are given dedications to art and/or artists – a not uncommon feature of Shepherdson’s work. He also gives close attention to language and punctuation as well as measurement, to suggest the way that language accounts, or fails to account, for change or loss.' (Introduction)
'Reading axolotl waltz feels a little like stepping into a painting by René Magritte or some similarly surreal universe. Challenging to fathom at times, Nathan Shepherdson’s poems here are also curiously absorbing, strange yet intimate, poignant yet playful and often subtly humorous. Some capture paradox, like the poem addressed to Ariel Shepherdson, beginning “I cannot be here until I leave” [85]. Other poems switch from human perspectives to objects, as in ‘the unconsumed apple’, which refers to the poisoned apple that J. Robert Oppenheimer briefly intended for his tutor Patrick Blackett [15-17], or ‘notes taken by a doll in Vienna’ [51-52], based on Oscar Kokoschka’s lithography and his life size doll of Alma Mahler. Many of the poems in this superb collection are given dedications to art and/or artists – a not uncommon feature of Shepherdson’s work. He also gives close attention to language and punctuation as well as measurement, to suggest the way that language accounts, or fails to account, for change or loss.' (Introduction)
