On Sunday February 16th, poets Julie Maclean and John Bartlett were in conversation with around 40 people at Torquay Community House about their recently released poetry collections.
Julie’s full collection Eye has been described by Anne Elvey as ‘unsettling and compelling‘.
Jo Langdon says, “Alert and attentive, Julie Maclean’s Eye is quick yet focused in its gaze, forming worlds anew and closely felt. These poems hold scenes of ‘melon light’, with ‘two dolphins / one for each eye’, ‘bumblebees the size of fairy wrens’, and birds ‘growling … like dogs’. Traversing landscapes inviting and violent—haunted by colonial violence—Maclean’s language is colloquial and eloquent, nimble and expansive. With ‘eyes everywhere’, her poems show how what is troubling or dangerous can be rendered ‘So easy through the lens’
Academic David Mccooey has described John’s pamphlet In the Spaces between stars lie Shadows thus: John Bartlett’s latest collection ranges from the universally personal to the intimately global. This is a poetry of lyrical intensity that brings together the elegiac and the erotic in an unfolding of arresting images. Even at its most clear-eyed and uncompromising, this moving collection looks to a time when ‘gentleness goes viral’.
Both books were published by Walleah Press in Tasmania
