Reading the River by Robert Adamson

Reading the River by Robert Adamson

Robert Adamson has been nourished for much of his life by Australia's Hawkesbury River. Reading the River praises nature - red in tooth and claw - and celebrates existence as a mythological quest. The early poems trace Adamson's own journey through a difficult childhood, prison and exile in the city, the source of a hard-won scepticism undercutting the highly personal Romanticism and daring lyricism of his later work.

'Robert Adamson is that rare instance of a poet who can touch all the world and yet stay particular, local to the body he's been given in a literal time and placeHe is as deft and resourceful a craftsman as exists, and his poems move with a clarity and ease I find unique. He has savored his life, felt it at each moment, and what he has written is its vivid and enduring testament' - Robert Creeley; 'Robert Adamson's Reading the River is a new song of myself, one that sets both song and self at risk. To read these brutal and beautiful lyrics is to undergo an experience - a journey and a test - and whoever can last the distance will have been changed in more than one way. To live with the work of this great poet is to live more deeply and more warily' - Kevin Hart; 'The spareness and taut energy of the more recent poems, for all Adamson's famous romanticism, seems classic... What it costs a poet to dare such plain statement, the patience it requires, even the impatience, the dedication, the hard work, is part of the mystery of these poems and of the life that has been worked through to get them down....How the poems, as they come, change and shape the poet - the existential surprise that keeps him alive and on his toes - is what keeps us too, as we move through this life in poetry, intimately engaged and enlivened from the first poem to the last' - David Malouf; 'Robert Adamson is one of Australia's national treasures' - John Ashbery

Robert Adamson was born in Sydney in 1943 and grew up in Neutral Bay and on the Hawkesbury River, New South Wales. During a tumultuous youth, he found his way to poetry, and in the five decades since he has produced 20 books of poetry and three books of prose. From 1970 to 1985 he was the driving force behind Australia's New Poetry magazine, and in 1987, with Juno Gemes, he established Paper Bark Press, for two decades one of Australia's leading poetry publishers. He was the inaugural CAL chair of poetry at UTS (University of Technology, Sydney) in 2011-14. He has won many major Australian poetry awards, including the Christopher Brennan Prize for lifetime achievement, the Patrick White Award, The Age Book of the Year Award for The Goldfinches of Baghdad (Flood Editions, 2006) and the Victorian Premier's Poetry Award for The Golden Bird (Black Inc, 2009). He has published three books in Britain with Bloodaxe: Reading the River: Selected Poems (2004), The Kingfisher's Soul (2009) and Net Needle (2016).

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781852246396
ISBN 10	1852246391
Title	Reading the River
Author	Robert Adamson
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Year published	2004-06-24
Number of pages	224
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable