'In this, his sixth full-sized collection, published exactly 30 years after his first collection, The Wolf Problem in Australia back in 1994, Paul Cliff explores the themes of Faith, Grace, Hope, Devotion—Fragility, Responsibility—Privilege, Relegation, Betrayal & Loss—in multifarious aspects across an array of personal and historical situations. Subjects range from the title poem’s prayer-flags flying in the family back garden, to the respectful approach to playing piano, considerations of the plight of zoo animals during the Battle for Berlin, the demise of an old Pilot Station; the latter-day disinterring of bodies from the Franklin Expedition, and the musings of a seventeenth-century Inquisitor investigating ‘possessed’ nunneries. There are wry and/or beautiful takes on crocodiles, blue tongue lizards, the thylacine, quolls and whippets, along with an array of sonnets, and two ironic bucolics contemplating degradation of the Darling River and fancifully reconstructing Burke & Wills.' (Publication summary)
