Carol and Ahoy

Simon West

• Publisher: Puncher & Wattmann
• Year: 2023
• ISBN:
  9781922571779
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

The backdrop of Carol and Ahoy is the Goulburn River and its floodplains around Shepparton. Ancestry and watchful reflection combine seamlessly in these poems, which are always in search of "what is tactile and particular", be it a gum tree, an agave or the past. Simon West's fluid, ever-shifting gaze will be familiar to readers of his previous volumes. Waking on a Summer Morning I asked if verse were no more than a toy,
then heard the blackbirds carol and ahoy
and the traffic's tidal snare drum sough.
They were absolute, these tones, not thought's forgotten setting now,
as they washed through open windows and the new-found
arch of door jambs, and echoed round
the room's old school of shadows. They were glory
of music on the mind's cool parquet floor. Simon West is the author of three collections of poetry and an edition of the Italian poet Guido Cavalcanti. He is represented in anthologies including Thirty Australian Poets, Young Poets: An Australian Anthology, and Contemporary Australian Poetry.

Table of contents

• River Tracks
• Hans Heysen
• On a Trip to Van Diemen’s Land
• Floodplains on the Broken River
• Uncanny Nature
• On Looking into a Chinese Scroll
• A Monologue on the Soul and Body
• Waking on a Summer Morning
• The Turtles and the Waterfall – A Dream
• Back at the Broken River
• The Limits of Parable
• Yore
• On Reading Again of David and Goliath
• Psalm
• Agave on the Victorian Coast
• The Lorikeets
• Boundary Line
• Walking in the Bush at Whroo
• After Looking at Donatello’s Reliefs for the Pulpit of Prato
• How Else?
• A Twenty-First-Century Poet Timidly Addresses the Muse
• How it Should Be
• The Magic Box – Nonna Tells a Fairy Tale
• Swimming
• The Twofold Tree
• A Goulburn Valley Eclogue
• Acknowledgements