'Luminous and profound, Companions, Ancestors, Inscriptions is the eleventh collection of poetry from one of Australia’s most respected and celebrated contemporary poets and translators. Over five sections, Boyle offers a wide-ranging exploration of what it means to be human, moving from the personal to the social and political, from the immediacy of the writer’s home to a traveller on a train to Shanghai or a French pianist performing Ravel, as seen on YouTube. This mingling of inner and outer realms continues in dream narratives that sit alongside political poems, such as ‘Our World’, and final haiku-like poems that return us to the vision of our small place in a world filled with other-than-human presences. This is a work of deep imagination and subtle humour, a generous sharing in the sometimes magical, sometimes uncertain and unsettling experience of being human.'(Publication summary)
