As the world realigns itself in the wake of a global pandemic, ABR turns its thoughts to the various forms – individual and institutional, material and more intangible – that recovery may take. In 'Poetry in times of recovery', we asked a number of Australian poets to share the works that best capture how recovery can look, sound, and feel. Today’s episode builds on the popularity of our ‘Poetry for troubled times’, released in 2020.

We bear in mind, of course, that these are still troubled times, as recent events in the Middle East and the intractable problems (to do with sovereignty and borders) back home well attest. Poetry may not be the only balm we need at this juncture, but in ‘the nightmare of the dark’, as W.H. Auden once put it, the poet’s ‘unconstraining voice’ nevertheless remains a place where ‘the healing fountain starts’.

All readers, poems, and times each reader appears:

1. Sarah Holland-Batt – Adam Zagajewski, ‘Try to Praise the Mutilated World’ (1:25)
2. Anders Villani – Jamaal May, ‘There Are Birds Here’ (3:32) and Tomas Tranströmer ‘Kyrie’ (5:47)
3. Felicity Plunkett – Tracy K. Smith, ‘An Old Story’ (7:01)
4. Louis Klee – Ralf Webb, ‘Love Story: The Back Pages’ (8:40) and excerpt from Lucy Hutchinson’s translation of Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura (10:49)
5. Jenny Harrison – Eavan Boland, ‘Lullaby’ (13:39)
6. Peter Goldsworthy – Eugenio Montale, ‘Forse un mattino’ (15:31)
7. Caitlin Maling – Theodore Roethke, ‘The Waking’ (16:41)
8. Judith Bishop – Tomas Tranströmer, ‘Face to Face’ (19:14)
9. Thuy On – Thuy On, ‘Beautiful Mess’ (21:03)
10. John Kinsella – Emily Brontë, ‘No Coward Soul is Mine’ (22:09)
    
    

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