Andrew Taylor’s selected poems expand across twenty-five years of work.

Moving from the early poems of The Cool Change through Ice Fishing, The Invention of Fire and later collections, the book traces a poetry practice that is deeply dedicated to articulation. 

The poems consequently are spare, almost littered, often beginning in the recognisable before letting the metaphorical slip in. The poems shown here in the photos are pretty clear towards the style, “Since you left / the whole world has gone too” moves grief into discarded objects and landscape, while elsewhere the apparently ordinary sight of a wet railway verge becomes an argument with ageing, expectation and disappointment.

This revised selection expands the original 1982 Selected Poems 1960–1980 to include work through 1985. Taylor remains an important figure in postwar Australian poetry, and this is a substantial introduction to his early and middle-period work.

University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, Queensland, 1988. Revised edition. Paperback. Light general shelf wear and mild edge rubbing; pages lightly age-toned. Internally clean and firmly bound. Very good condition.