In these ‘New and Selected Poems’ Glen Phillips has three basic themes—scenes from Shanghai life in today’s China, ancient granite landscapes of Western Australia and travelling in Australia, China and Italy.
Anne Born's poems, on the other hand, have the sharpness of acrylics. They demonstrate great confidence in her handling of words. The language is sharp, accurate, incisive and fierce, to the point of being savage, as in 'The Bone Shed', that 'foul hell-hall' where 'The air drummed by mallets/ reduced the stuff to bone-meal/ and other horrors'. Dominique Hecq
The Shanghai Suite of 28 poems was written during a two-month period in early 2004 while Glen was a Visiting Professor teaching a course in ‘Western Culture’ at the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology. This was also part of the research for his PhD in Creative Writing. During and after those months, he composed most of the ‘suite’ of poems about Shanghai and that region of China. Other Shanghai poems were written when Glen became a regular visitor to USST and other universities in the Zhejiang, Shandong and Jiangsu provinces.
edited by Glen Phillips and Rod Mengham
- ‘I suppose it is true that poetry has “saved” — me in that it has focused a fairly obsessional personality. I tend not to do things by halves’—John Kinsella. Essays on the works of John Kinsella by authors such as Dennis Haskell, Australia, Louis Armand, Czech Republic, Xavier Pons, France, Marjorie Perloff, USA and Peter Larkin, UK.
Phillips’ meditative, quietly assertive poems have a balance of joy and shadows, certainty and uncertainty, which points to an alert contemporary sensibility. Dennis Haskell ...moves very naturally and inevitably, saying plenty en route. Fay Zwicky Phillips’ best poems are elemental, with thick strokes of colour and solid, touchable objects. S. K. Kelen |
Lovesongs Lovescenes
A celebrant of love, Glen's images spring naturally from the countryside in which he was born (Southern Cross - WA).
From the quiet tenderness of 'Rain on the Roof' through the mood changes of 'Brass and Gold, ' in which the delicacy of love is likened to the 'tracery of She-oak boughs/Brushing the sky with muted needles,' to the lessons for lovers the poet finds in the seasonal shedding of eucalyptus leaves, Glen presents a series of love-scapes that enrich the reader's understanding of our kinship with the world around us, as well as our links with each other. Yasmine Gooneratne
From the quiet tenderness of 'Rain on the Roof' through the mood changes of 'Brass and Gold, ' in which the delicacy of love is likened to the 'tracery of She-oak boughs/Brushing the sky with muted needles,' to the lessons for lovers the poet finds in the seasonal shedding of eucalyptus leaves, Glen presents a series of love-scapes that enrich the reader's understanding of our kinship with the world around us, as well as our links with each other. Yasmine Gooneratne
It may be true that only in Australia some vestiges of human history can live on fully. Thus one finds in Glen Phillips' poetry the unmistakable ring of an Elizabethan's voice, with the same lust for life and the same attentiveness to people and things, tinged with just a gentle misanthrophy.
His poetry is always and essentially in motion, taking the reader towards events and into myriads of minds. It has its own quality and yet, in it, one often hears the voice of the bard that Blake had heard and wanted us all to hear. Here in this volume, the reader will marvel at the ways in which the poet traces life back to its dark and deep roots, getting down to the level of the unconscious where poetic utterance is not a mere figure of speech, and where humans, animals and things are necessarily intertwined. Montri Umavijani
His poetry is always and essentially in motion, taking the reader towards events and into myriads of minds. It has its own quality and yet, in it, one often hears the voice of the bard that Blake had heard and wanted us all to hear. Here in this volume, the reader will marvel at the ways in which the poet traces life back to its dark and deep roots, getting down to the level of the unconscious where poetic utterance is not a mere figure of speech, and where humans, animals and things are necessarily intertwined. Montri Umavijani
