Around Here

Cath Kenneally

210 x 130 PB 104 PP 1862544875 $16.95 Poetry APN 9781862544871 Wakefield Press

Are nuns still buried there? At school
when one died, we'd line up all kitted out
in full school clobber, form a guard-
of-honour straggling

from the chapel to the graveyard,
kindy-kids to seniors, all the nuns,
the effect a little dented when they
hoisted the coffin onto the jinkler

Cath Kenneally’s poetry is unique: confident, discursive, witty writing driven by intuition and association and a doubting, quick intelligence. With a focus ever-shifting between local, global, present and past, familial and political, Cath draws you into her world with a compelling combination of emotional intensity and clearsightedness.

‘What is most valuable in these poems, and what is rare, is Kenneally’s avoidance of metaphor and of the conventionally poetic in favour of intelligence and educated plain-speak – a plain-speak that, of course, isn’t so plain, so unitary.’ Ken Bolton