Net Needle

by Robert Adamson

Poetry. In The Times Literary Supplement , David Wheatley calls Robert Adamson "one of the finest Australian poets at work today." NET NEEDLE brings together the presiding influences of his life, early and late. He casts an affectionate eye on the Hawkesbury fishermen who "stitched their lives into my days," childhood escapades, lost literary comrades, the light and tides of the river, and the ambiance of his youth. Throughout, he is characteristically attuned to the natural world, sketching encounters both intimate and strange. These are poems of clear-eyed vision and mastery, borne of long experience, alert and at ease. As Michael Palmer observes, "Eye and ear, none better."

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2015

Reviews

[Tonymess · Rating 4 out of 5]

If Les Murray making the Prime Minister’s Literary Award shortlist is a celebration of stalwarts of Australian poetry, then Robert Adamson joining him on the list potentially shows the judges preference for established names. Robert Adamson was announced as the winner of the 2011 Patrick White Award, an annual literary prize established by Australia’s only Nobel Prize in Literature winner using his 1973 Prize winnings to establish a trust. A $25,000 cash award is given to a “writer who has been highly creative over a long period but has not necessarily received adequate recognition”. Due to economic conditions the prize was reduced in 2010 to $18,000 so the former inmate received a smaller prize for his poetry.

With twenty books of poetry and three books of prose behind him, he is another stalwart of the Australian poetic family, from 1970 to 1985 he was the driving force behind Australia’s New Poetry magazine. A troubled youth Adamson was involved in the theft of an exotic bird from Taronga Park Zoo, setting him on the road to a childhood spent in correctional facilities.

“It was in prison, ultimately, where he discovered the saving grace of poetry. Inspired by the songs of Bob Dylan, he began writing what he thought were songs, only to be told by a priest that they were poems, not songs. The priest then gave him a book of poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins. For Adamson, it was his ”passport out of there””. (Taken from Canberra Times 4 November 2011 – “Former Inmate wins $18,000 Poetry Prize” )

“Net Needle” contains forty-two poems, broken into four parts, and opens with an epigraph by William Butler Yeats;

All the stream that’s roaring by
Came out of a needle’s Eye;
Things unborn, things that are gone,
Form needle’s eye still goad it on.

Part one contains mystic, natural poems, the first three poems containing references to gardens, swallows, cuckoos, koels, storm birds, poppies, mosquitoes, wasps, bees, crickets, mangroves, grapevines, bottlebrush, bamboo, possums. The second poem Summer subtitled (after Georg Trakl) is obviously a reference to the following Trakl poem (which appears in the collection “Sebastian Dreaming”, translated by James Reidel);

For my full review go to Net Needle – Robert Adamson | Messenger's Booker (and more)
https://messybooker.wordpress.com/201...