Friendly Street New Poets 5

Ioana Petrescu’s poems are sophisticated, witty and eloquent, using elements of play in both a post-modern way and with enough sense of particular personality to communicate with the reader, and not to create distance. She is obviously familiar with international contemporary writing styles, but it is this sense of personality that finally wins over.

Maureen Vale writes from within a well recognised world of here and now. Whether she deals with plums (and Eve with a preference for them over apples), ‘Figs’, ‘Going Home’, or even exotic subjects like ‘Sergei Krikalov Ponders Ten Months in Space’ and ‘Hypatia’s Last Drive’, Maureen Vale’s poetry is rich with visual images, sense perceptions and a stoic endurance of almost visionary dimensions.

Julian Zytnik’s collection has the nervous edginess of life today, flashing with as many references and innuendos as a TV commercial yet with an underlying regionalism that defines the particularities of place. South Australian place. Quick as a flicked magazine, yet pervaded by an underlying hurt and vulnerability, these poems flex their muscles and reveal their dangerous inner tenderness.