Cirrus@Austlit

'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)

'“… an involving exploration of affection, solitude, travel and the tender intricacies of human connection … nuanced poems in which the fractures of experience are exquisitely sutured by words.”

– Paul Hetherington, Professor Emeritus, University of Canberra' (Publication summary)

'The poetry of B. R. Dionysius in Critical State holds continuity and rupture in tension as he explores the encroachments of the Anthropocene on distinctive Queensland regional environments. Focused around the poet’s nature observing adventures, the book is divided into five sections which reflect the diverse habitats of the state. These poems capture the beauty and terrible loss of wild creatures and places, and joyful glimpses of survival and recovery.' (Introduction)

'These prose poems – I would like to call them ‘moments of poetry – recall journeys and intimacies, spaces of habitation, daily practices of denial, rescue affection or assertation. They reflect on negotiations between body and mind that can so fiercely mark the experience of womanhood, striving to capture the intermittent intensity of this ‘boundless resistance’ through the impact of summer and winter storms.'

Source: Afterword.