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The Taste of River Water
Disarming, warm, and always accessible, Cate Kennedy’s poems make ordinary experiences glow. Everything that suffuses her well-loved prose is here: compassion, insight, lyrical precision, and the clear, minimalist eye that reveals how life can turn on a single moment. Musing on the undercurrents and interconnections between legacy, memory, motherhood, and the natural world, the poems in this exhilarating collection begin on the surface and then take us, gracefully and effortlessly, to a far more thought-provoking place. Grounded in lived experience, with all its mysteries and consolations, they resonate with a passionate, sensuous honesty.
96 pages, Paperback
First published April 27, 2011
10 people are currently reading
280 people want to read
About the author
Cate Kennedy
40 books93 followersCate Kennedy is an Australian author based in Victoria. She graduated from University of Canberra and has also taught at several colleges, including The University of Melbourne. She is the author of the highly acclaimed novel The World Beneath, which won the People’s Choice Award in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards in 2010. It was also shortlisted for The Age fiction prize 2010 and the ASA Barbara Jefferis Award 2010, among others. She is an award-winning short-story writer whose work has twice won The Age Short Story Competition and has appeared in a range of publications, including The New Yorker. Her collection, Dark Roots, was shortlisted for the Steele Rudd Award in the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards and for the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal. Cate is also the author of the travel memoir Sing, and Don’t Cry, and the poetry collections Joyflight and Signs of Other Fires. Her latest book is The Taste of River Water: New and Selected Poems by Cate Kennedy, which was published in May 2011 and won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards CJ Dennis Prize for Poetry.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
February 4, 2024
Proof that poetry can be both accessible and profound. Every one of these poems is a gem, but I especially loved "Joyflight" and "8 x 10 colour enlargements $16.50".
November 30, 2015
If you are a fan of Kennedy’s short fiction then I suspect that you will enjoy her poetry in The Taste of River Water.
The collection presents poetry with a strong narrative structure and focus i.e. these poems tell stories, the diction and register is fairly plain/natural in its delivery.
Kennedy has been criticised for this facet of her poetry and I certainly felt that some of the poems could easily have been flash fiction if not formatted into lines.
Still there’s something to be said for poetry that entertains, that doesn’t require copious rereading for understanding, that gives you story and emotion.
This collection is fairly accessible to the inexperienced reader and I found it a fluid and enjoyable read for me, combining an ease of understanding and artful narrative construction. In terms of content it also ticked my boxes for nostalgia, history and emotional engagement.
Cate is a good storyteller and that shows in her fiction as well as her poetry. There’s a solid sense of completeness in her poems, that she’s stopped at just the right point.
That’s probably the biggest takeaway for me as a poet, her skill at crafting story through poetry.
Are they memorable poems? I suppose time will tell. They were all, however, enjoyable.
Not a wasted cent here.
The collection presents poetry with a strong narrative structure and focus i.e. these poems tell stories, the diction and register is fairly plain/natural in its delivery.
Taproot
I must plant the tree seedling
a friend left here on the step
find a place for the cards.
It seems important somehow
a matter of fumbling pride
to fold all this paper square for recycling
the florist wrap from such extravagant, unwanted flowers
the envelopes
I’m saving the envelopes
I forget why for the minute.
…
Kennedy has been criticised for this facet of her poetry and I certainly felt that some of the poems could easily have been flash fiction if not formatted into lines.
Still there’s something to be said for poetry that entertains, that doesn’t require copious rereading for understanding, that gives you story and emotion.
This collection is fairly accessible to the inexperienced reader and I found it a fluid and enjoyable read for me, combining an ease of understanding and artful narrative construction. In terms of content it also ticked my boxes for nostalgia, history and emotional engagement.
Cate is a good storyteller and that shows in her fiction as well as her poetry. There’s a solid sense of completeness in her poems, that she’s stopped at just the right point.
That’s probably the biggest takeaway for me as a poet, her skill at crafting story through poetry.
Are they memorable poems? I suppose time will tell. They were all, however, enjoyable.
Not a wasted cent here.
January 22, 2018
Everyday moments rendered with such care and subtlety; and so sad; so very, very sad.
December 31, 2017
4.5/5* This may have risen to first place in terms of poetry collections I read this year. Even though this is a short book, it is so full of great pieces that you just want to savour. Each piece is so perfectly constructed with it's own narrative, and everyday moments are capture so clearly in Cate Kennedy's Words.This was just a book picked up at a second hand store and I'm so glad I came across it because it's beautiful, and I'll definitely be seeking out Kennedy's other writing. Favourite pieces include '8x10 colour enlargements $16.50', and 'The Chilean miners are lifted into the light'.
January 9, 2019
Dipped my toe in and out of the flow of this glowing collection. Not sure that I got the full taste of the weight and breadth of it so hope to dip in again to it sometime.
I'll be looking out for it to add to my permanent collection and it's with reluctance that I return it to the library until another time.
I'll be looking out for it to add to my permanent collection and it's with reluctance that I return it to the library until another time.
October 20, 2020
Kennedy evokes small moments of life and inscribes them with quiet beauty. An auction at a decommissioned country church, a lost engagement stone in the vegie garden, a toddler grabbing onto your leg whilst you sit at your desk. Kennedy works a symbol too - the taste of river water, second prize in a photography competition, the requesting of a bee hive. Some slow delights to savour here.
December 28, 2023
A perfect contemporary blend of life, of true reality, and imagination, and passion in modern poetry. Some sexy ones too.
May 22, 2020
Poetry isn’t usually a genre I’m drawn to, I think mainly because I’m not confident that I can read it in the way it’s intended. But this little volume......Wow! Exquisite. Beautiful. Heartfelt. Cate Kennedy seems to capture the world, in all of it’s flawless beauty, and cracked brokenness, and write it into these perfect little lines of verse. This is a book to be read slowly, one poem at a time. Don’t rush. Then when you get to the end, go back to the start and read them all over again.
March 26, 2013
“The Taste of River Water” : This beautiful little book had me in tears before Sydney on the flight home. (Yes, I know, I'm so tough). And that was just a brief sketch of a farming family at a photo competition and before the extended blow of the final two sections. Simple and straightforward language which was something of a relief after some of the writing I had been exposed to recently.
Cate being the only writer at the(Bellingen Readers & Writers) Festival who gets a photo on my Facebook page for the role she plays in mentoring, supporting and encouraging young women writers in this country to stay the course and develop their talent. In this way she mirrors the impressive lifelong model of Judith Rodriguez and Jennifer Strauss in their efforts to embody and demonstrate what I would call lived feminism in their daily life and work.
Cate being the only writer at the(Bellingen Readers & Writers) Festival who gets a photo on my Facebook page for the role she plays in mentoring, supporting and encouraging young women writers in this country to stay the course and develop their talent. In this way she mirrors the impressive lifelong model of Judith Rodriguez and Jennifer Strauss in their efforts to embody and demonstrate what I would call lived feminism in their daily life and work.
December 31, 2011
I was given this book for Christmas, and I'm glad I was because I tend not to buy books of poetry, and this book is really full of incredible poems. There is a lot of poems about small, insignificant but beautiful moments, but there others dedicated to historical moments and the deeply personal.
If I keep on writing this review, I'm going to end up rambling, but I think these three words (from this blurb from the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards website sum it up completely: disarming, warm and accessible.
If I keep on writing this review, I'm going to end up rambling, but I think these three words (from this blurb from the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards website sum it up completely: disarming, warm and accessible.
June 20, 2012
Beautiful poetry. Again this was a poet I introduced to my writing group the other week when I read one of the poems from this collection. Those listening adored it. You can read more about this book on my Write and Read with Dale blog for September 29 2011 http://orangedale.livejournal.com/?sk...
March 31, 2021
I really enjoyed this poetry collection by Australian author Cate Kennedy. The 40 poems are a mix of memoir, slices of life, and social commentary with a conscience. Although her use of imagery and literary devices is excellent, the poems are also accessible. Many drew me in and I wanted to go back and read them again (which I did).
My personal favourite was 'Picasso's portrait of a young woman' in which a family run into an art gallery to get away from the rain. The girl is mesmerised by a painting, while the others don't 'get it'.
'As they walk out she cannot name the change, the dislocation.
It is as if the lozenges of light in that foyer ceiling
have been reassembled, the blood beats in her head
as though newly transfused, these people strangers,
speaking a dulled and muffled language.'
There are tears over the heartbreak of losing a baby in 'Eating Earth', and then tears of joy at finally having a child in 'Thank you'.
You can feel the injustice in 'The Poor Commissioners', which recounts the true story of a group of Irish famine victims who died in the snow in 1849 while the 'Poor commissioners', who were supposed to help them, refused to see them because they were having dinner inside. However, Kennedy brings it into the present. We can shake our heads at those Poor Commissioners, but the poor
'... are with us, trudging with the last of their energy,
thousands of miles now, from poorhouses and famine fields,
chilled and exiled, holding pitchforks or children
or unsigned paperwork,
forged, faded identifications, the wrong currencies,
they are with us and we will not see them ...'
The poem about the rescue of the Chilean miners in 2010 is also moving, with one of the miners declaring, 'I have been with God and the devil ... and I seized the hand of God. It was the better hand.'
However, I also liked Kennedy's ability to capture the everyday. In '8 x 10 colour enlargements $16.50', she tells the story of a woman who entered a photo of her children in a competition. The judge singled the photo out and said it would have been among the winners but unfortunately it didn't meet the theme of 'Images of Rural Life'. When the poet later tells her how much she liked the photo, the woman says, 'You know ... it didn't break the rules. This was the first moment my children ever saw rain.'
If you love well-crafted poetry that gives lots of food for thought, I'd highly recommend this collection.
My personal favourite was 'Picasso's portrait of a young woman' in which a family run into an art gallery to get away from the rain. The girl is mesmerised by a painting, while the others don't 'get it'.
'As they walk out she cannot name the change, the dislocation.
It is as if the lozenges of light in that foyer ceiling
have been reassembled, the blood beats in her head
as though newly transfused, these people strangers,
speaking a dulled and muffled language.'
There are tears over the heartbreak of losing a baby in 'Eating Earth', and then tears of joy at finally having a child in 'Thank you'.
You can feel the injustice in 'The Poor Commissioners', which recounts the true story of a group of Irish famine victims who died in the snow in 1849 while the 'Poor commissioners', who were supposed to help them, refused to see them because they were having dinner inside. However, Kennedy brings it into the present. We can shake our heads at those Poor Commissioners, but the poor
'... are with us, trudging with the last of their energy,
thousands of miles now, from poorhouses and famine fields,
chilled and exiled, holding pitchforks or children
or unsigned paperwork,
forged, faded identifications, the wrong currencies,
they are with us and we will not see them ...'
The poem about the rescue of the Chilean miners in 2010 is also moving, with one of the miners declaring, 'I have been with God and the devil ... and I seized the hand of God. It was the better hand.'
However, I also liked Kennedy's ability to capture the everyday. In '8 x 10 colour enlargements $16.50', she tells the story of a woman who entered a photo of her children in a competition. The judge singled the photo out and said it would have been among the winners but unfortunately it didn't meet the theme of 'Images of Rural Life'. When the poet later tells her how much she liked the photo, the woman says, 'You know ... it didn't break the rules. This was the first moment my children ever saw rain.'
If you love well-crafted poetry that gives lots of food for thought, I'd highly recommend this collection.
March 8, 2020
There are four or five good poems here that might work with a Stage 5 class.
December 18, 2020
Exquisite, moving, tender, vulnerable, brutally honest. I will be returning over and over again to thses poems. Thank you, Cate!
Read
February 19, 2022Of note:
- ‘Eating Earth’; and
- ‘Knothole’.
- ‘Eating Earth’; and
- ‘Knothole’.
June 8, 2022
Good
July 14, 2023
so so so so beautiful. don't read poetry much and picked it randomly off the library shelves but her descriptions are so rich and imaginative, it really drew me in.
March 26, 2025
A beautiful collection of poems.
April 24, 2016
Beautiful evocative poetry. The second half of the book so painfully leads the reader through the devastation of losing a child. In the first half, I was led to new places as though I lived next door all this time and was finally being invited inside. What I found there was what I expected but nothing like I imagined. In "Picasso's portrait of a young woman" a young girl experiences a great artist, by chance and for the first time, when rain drives her family inside a a gallery. As her father professes to be able to do as well, the girl is trapped by the beauty on a Picasso canvas ...
"Something closes in her throat, the open.
A hand somewhere
sweeps a piercing, unerring line through her chest."
In "8x10 Colour Enlargements" she captures completely the quiet dignity of a family so fused with the rural life and the injustices it delivers daily, that they submit regardless with a grace lost in this end of Australian history, but it's the razor sharp imagery which cuts often. In "Eating Earth", the loss of a baby, still born at full term, is summed by the following:
"All night
a saline drip ticks like a clock into my hand
tear by tear."
A wonderful word smith, her images are tight, sharply focussed but always on the edge of the author's control.
"Something closes in her throat, the open.
A hand somewhere
sweeps a piercing, unerring line through her chest."
In "8x10 Colour Enlargements" she captures completely the quiet dignity of a family so fused with the rural life and the injustices it delivers daily, that they submit regardless with a grace lost in this end of Australian history, but it's the razor sharp imagery which cuts often. In "Eating Earth", the loss of a baby, still born at full term, is summed by the following:
"All night
a saline drip ticks like a clock into my hand
tear by tear."
A wonderful word smith, her images are tight, sharply focussed but always on the edge of the author's control.
March 21, 2015
I stumbled upon this publication (in eBook format) by accident and what a find it was! A magnificent collection of poems in an elegantly designed format. Earthy, authentic and emotional but elegantly restrained. The Goodreads "blurb" is absolutely spot on in emphasising the way the poems "begin on the surface and then take us, gracefully and effortlessly, to a far more thought-provoking place" and in asserting that poems "resonate with a passionate, sensuous honesty".
Read
December 7, 2022I am pushing on some simmering splinter,
some fragment of burning shrapnel,
reopening flesh over and over.
I want this cauterised, branded into me,
a hard and desensitised scar,
stopping all assumption in its shocked tracks.
- eating earth
3.75 stars
some fragment of burning shrapnel,
reopening flesh over and over.
I want this cauterised, branded into me,
a hard and desensitised scar,
stopping all assumption in its shocked tracks.
- eating earth
3.75 stars
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews