Barbara Giles

In an increasingly secular age, The Lines of the Hand is an unusual book. Almost half of the poems it contains are direct communications with an evident and accessible God, while others are celebrations of Creation.

It is a truism that poets don’t need to write their autobiography. Roland Barthes, with his ‘death of the author’, may have thought otherwise but in Barbara Giles’ new book, Poems: Seven Ages, published in her eighty-seventh year, there is no mistaking the autobiographical core.

Though neither the title nor the blurb suggests it, Poems: Seven Ages is really a ‘selected’. Giles has gone back over her four earlier books, chosen what she (or perhaps her editor, Judith Rodriguez) thinks are the best poems and arranged them in chronological order according to subject, rather than date of composition or publication. Thus we have sections corresponding with her childhood in England, her earlier married life, her mid-life preoccupations, and the poems on women’s ageing from which she has been most anthologised.

Comparison between these anthologies is interesting. As the poems (6,000 for Mattara, 3,000 for the Australian), were the response to a general invitation, can we reasonably speculate that here we have a picture of what Australian middle of the spectrum poetry is like – or what poets in that range see as approved? The ends of the spectrum remain unrepresented.

Filtered through the judges’ taste we have a more similar product than I would have expected. Few of the lively young are there, none of even the wittiest of performance poetry, – which can hold up on the page – and some poets of course don’t compete in this sort of contest. There’s too much likeness.

Anthologists face more than one dilemma of choice, beside that of personal preference. Is it better to show more of fewer poets, and give a true picture of their qualities and scope, to range widely across the landscape of the art, or reach a compromise between these methods? There are excellent anthologies in each genre.