Poetry

Formal music

Item: History of the Day
Author: Paul Hetherington

by Paul Hetherington •

September 2009, no. 314

History of the Day by Stephen Edgar

Black Pepper, $24.95 pb, 123 pp

Poetry

Formal music

by Paul Hetherington •

September 2009, no. 314

History of the Day is Stephen Edgar’s seventh poetry collection. His first was Queuing for the Mudd Club in 1985, and over the last twenty-four years he has been publishing poetry with a strikingly individual formal music. This latest volume further refines his superbly measured control of rhythm and cadence. There is nothing else like it in contemporary Australian poetry.

Edgar’s poetry has always explored a wide variety of subjects, exhibiting a questing, cerebral and sometimes troubled sensibility. History of the Day confirms his interest in human history (and human injustice and cruelty), art and culture, and the possibility of certain kinds of illumination.

Paul Hetherington

By this contributor

Paul Hetherington has published seventeen volumes of poetry and prose poetry and won or been nominated for more than forty national and international awards and competitions, recently winning the 2021 Bruce Dawe National Poetry Prize. He co-wrote Prose Poetry: An introduction (Princeton, 2020), and co-edited Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry (MUP, 2020). He is Emeritus Professor of Writing at the University of Canberra.