Mozart, Sisyphus, cities, weather, domestic rooms, European memory and Australian dislocation all appear as if caught in the same weather system.

Alex Skovron’s Sleeve Notes is a finely worked early collection from one of Australia’s more exacting poets. Published as part of the Contemporary Australian Poets series, it moves through music, memory, exile, language, history and how ordinary live perceives them.

Skovron was born in Poland then migrated to Australia as a child. His work often carries that layered sense of place, inheritance and translation without turning it into a blunt autobiographical badge. His poetry has been widely published, and later collections consolidated him as a serious, formally alert Australian poet. This is a good one for readers of Australian poetry, music-haunted writing, philosophical lyric work, and poets who can do clever without sounding like they are trying to win a knife fight in a seminar room.

Paperback, Hale & Iremonger in association with Golvan Arts, 1992. First edition. Part of the Contemporary Australian Poets series. Good second-hand condition, with light shelf wear and some general age toning.