Alan Gould’s writing career began in the early 1970s when he was one of the ‘Canberra Poets’. This substantial selection covers thirty years and clearly shows both the achievements and the limitations of his work: I think the former outweigh the latter. One of the strengths of his poetry is a consistent vision; thirty years gives the opportunity for that to be explored in all its ramifications. The centre of this vision is history or, in its unintellectualised form, the past. Almost all the poems relate to this in one way or another. Even the later poems of humour or love or the waiting for a child’s birth are framed by the overriding meditation on the past, so that, though they are expressions of an intimate personal life, it is one conducted on the surface of the immense, slowly changing patterns of history.

At least history is never merely an opportunity for researched poetic vignettes. An early poem, ‘Mount Kosciusko Essay’, immediately sees that one of the essential problems is the issue of perspectives and scales. The poet, whose perspective enables him to see that a mountain hut is grimier than it was a year ago and that rats have been at work, also thinks of how the earth’s mantle adjusts ‘minutely, immensely’.