Prickly Moses

Poems

Simon West

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9780691250595, 9780691250922
• eBook ISBN: 9780691250960
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Compelling poems that celebrate language as it encounters the nameless variety of the natural world, from Australia to Italy

An uncanny blend of the external and the intimate has been a hallmark of Simon West's poetry for nearly twenty years. In this new collection, the Australian poet and Italianist delights in the transforming and endlessly varied powers of naming and speaking. West's intensely regional focus stands in dialogue with Europe and antiquity. Landscapes reveal the tangle of their historical dimensions, as the rivers of both the Goulburn Valley in southeastern Australia and the Po Valley in northern Italy merge and flow into the wider currents of the Southern Ocean. Again and again, language and the senses throw themselves into the nameless riot of the world, from eucalypts and clouds to a medieval bell tower and the sounds a pencil makes as it crosses a page.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Notes on Clouds
• Body’s Ken
• A Penny for Your Thoughts
• The Campanile
• Writing Sounds
• Impromptu Parade
• Acanthus
• In the Po Valley
• Three Poems after Franco Fortini
• The Sun in the Door
• Heading North through the Goulburn Valley
• Variations on the Walk Back from Bushrangers Bay
• Exeat
• Villeggiatura
• Elemental Song—Yarra Bend Park
• Paddlesteaming
• Prickly Moses
• A Catalogue of Watercolours
• In Hill Country
• Back Roads
• Roadside Shaws
• The Collar Piece
• Ghirigori in Turin
• Northerly
• Willows Felled along Merri Creek
• Looking South from Tasmania
• Earshot
• Late-Winter Blackbird
• Settled Rain
• Notes and Acknowledgements
• Series List