'Jean Talbot's luminous poetry offers a mirror to look at ourselves going to infinity. Like her subject in "Spider Dictionary" she holds her silent centre in a web of dark and shining poems that segue from a blitz-blighted English childhood to the sea-blue shock of a a new life in Newcastle, New South Wales. There, with wit and understanding rooted deeply in the fecund mysteries of garden, raiforest, sacred cave and family, she pulls us with her pell-mell towards the light' (Publication summary)
