Small-Scale Observations

by James Sutherland-Smith

The poems in James Sutherland-Smith's eighth collection move from the garden into the neighbourhood of "a down-at-heel Hapsburg town" and then range into the nearby forest, the personal and the past. Borders are crossed and seemingly insignificant creatures suddenly gain visionary dimensions. The title poem recalls a poet whose attention to the small-scale made his work seem minor, yet as Hardy wrote "he noticed such things," a heedfulness absent in a contemporary world where both simplistic analysis and solutions constantly fail to address threats to our very existence.
The namesake of a war criminal has been chopping wood for three days hefting an orange-handled axe. Behind him three hunting dogs bark at the nonchalant passage of a cat.

92 pages, Paperback

Published October 7, 2022