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The broad church of Australian poetry

by
January-February 2015, no. 368

The Best Australian Poems 2014 edited by Geoff Page

Black Inc., $24.99 pb, 209 pp

The broad church of Australian poetry

by
January-February 2015, no. 368

‘Lending printed eloquence to a poem’ comes from ‘Alas’, Chris Wallace-Crabbe’s elegiac tribute to Seamus Heaney. There is eloquence aplenty in this fine collection of more than a hundred and twenty poems edited by poet Geoff Page, someone who understands that eloquence speaks in many tones and in various formal structures. This variety is generously represented here, even if, as a result of Page’s allegiance to ‘a broad church’ of Australian poetry and his wish to represent its full range of tendencies in a way that will speak to a congregation of ‘average reader[s]’, the collection treads lightly in the realm of experimental or avant-garde poetry.

Jennifer Strauss reviews 'The Best Australian Poems 2014' edited by Geoff Page

The Best Australian Poems 2014

edited by Geoff Page

Black Inc., $24.99 pb, 209 pp

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