Cirrus@Austlit

'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) 

'In this, his fifth full-sized collection, Paul Cliff evokes the city of Canberra and surrounding region, where he has lived for the past 20 years. The poems work via characteristically wide-ranging moods and voice registers, from lyrical and elegiac to narrative and comic. They also deploy a variety of forms, from sonnets and odes to fables and epigrams, underlain by seductive rhythms and arresting metaphor. The capital's festivals, institutions and monuments, everyday street life, suburbs, and lakescape are investigated, while the more distant terrains of Weereewa (Lake George), Namadgi, the Monaro, the Snowy Mountains, and the South Coast of New South Wales are also evoked in engaging and often striking terms.' (Publication summary)

'Things that get in through the gap in the pole and sheet-iron fence that separates us from the besser-block compound next door include a clutter of chooks, to scrabble up God knows what from our gravel yard; three mongrel dogs, to sprawl on the old, chewed-up vinyl couch upon our back porch; and seven little Dili girls.' (Introduction)

Paul Cliff's sixth collection, consolidates and extends the range of his previous work, with diverse themes touching on popular culture, the political versus private worlds, rural and urban locations; artistic, literary and historical figures; the craft of writing and editing; rites of passage (illness, ageing, death); animals, and travel. And on the sometimes surprising interconnection of these. Poems assume an array of forms including dramatic monologues, lyrics, elegies, sonnets, haiku, epigrams, ekphrastic pieces and prose poems — all underpinned by the observant eye, verbal inventiveness, infectious sense of play, swinging rhythms and striking imagery which critics have noted in his earlier collections.