Dorothy Porter had a remarkable ability to make poetry feel like something happening in real time. 

What a Piece of Work is a verse novel that brings this restless energy to questions of family. At its centre is a psychiatrist whose professional confidence is complicated by the people closest to him, particularly his brother Clarrie, whose mental deterioration raises uncomfortable questions about the limits of treatment, responsibility and love.

Porter moves between conversations, private thoughts and emotional confrontations in short, sharply observed poems that can turn from tenderness to cruelty in a handful of lines. Her language is direct and often startlingly funny, finding the absurdity in relationships without diminishing their seriousness. Psychiatry becomes as much a subject of scepticism as a means of understanding, while the relationships between the characters expose the distance between wanting to help someone and knowing what help might actually mean. A distinctive work of Australian literature, full of the wit, velocity and emotional precision that make Porter's poetry so difficult to categorise.

Picador, 2000 reprint of the 1999 edition. Paperback. Good condition, with light general shelf wear and minor rubbing to the covers.