'Put bushfire and a poet together and you get an electrifying, rare, poetic insight into the drama of fire and its aftermath.
'Time of Fire, Harry Laing's fourth poetry collection, zeroes in on his experience in the 2019/20 bushfires - both as a landholder living on the edge of Monga National Park on the NSW Southern Tablelands and as a volunteer with the NSW Rural Fire Service.
'It's as if the fire itself was dictating these poems. Fire as the elemental force driving the narrative- from lightning strikes in a time of extreme drought and heat to the sheer ferocity of the fire's rampage, followed by ashen silence.
'Laing's grief at what's been lost is lightened by his witnessing of the regenerative power of the forest, his hearing the first treecreeper days after the fire, sighting the first emerald shoots of tree ferns. And throughout he salutes the powerful depth of connection within the Braidwood community and people's care for each other in that most threatening of times: the time of fire.' (Publication summary)
