Brook Emery



Review Short: Brook Emery’s Have Been and Are

Brook Emery’s new collection, Have Been and Are, continues in the vein of what might be called philosophical-demotic established in previous volumes such as Uncommon Light and Collusion. I don’t think that anyone else in the cohort of contemporary Australian poetry does this quite as well as he does.

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Jayne Fenton Keane Reviews Brook Emery

Misplaced Heart showcases Emery's diverse, lyrical voice in a collection that is capable of satisfying a range of tastes. Emery's documentation of familiar, often ordinary scenes, places and circumstances, and his pleasure in a style that fluctuates between the lyrical and the colloquial, is a well recognised feature of his writing.

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The Distance and the Heat

The river’s dried up, just the hard sheen of mud and the cracks like lizard skin to tell where water once had pooled and the smell that rises with the day, the rotting on the bank, the release of flies …

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A Twist of Hemp

Not knowing a cloverleaf from a half-hitch, I sentimentalise ropes and knots. Lariats with their cunning slipknot, the bound strands of bowlines so furred and stiff with salt they’ll never part; even the drop of the hangman’s noose, the knot …

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