Slo-Mo Tsunami and other Poems

Bruce Dawe has received wide recognition as Australia’s most popular poet, his books often being set for study at secondary and tertiary levels. Slo-Mo Tsunami offers a typically wide range of poems covering personal, social, political, and religious issues. Some critical opinions It is because no single Dawe poem strains to grasp the totality of life that Dawe can summon a kaleidoscope of public and private feeling with poems that continually delight and surprise. He is an eligible popular poet because he is accessible in both language and attitude. -Nicholas Birns, Australian Book Review. Like William Blake, he demonstrates the ability ‘To see a world in a grain of sand’. Dawe bestows on the minutiae of life a mythic significance, both gently mocking and affectionately admiring. -Margaret Saltau, The Age. Much of his poetry is in the public domain; his concerns shared by many working men and women… He is modern without being avant garde, contemporary without being radical. In this respect he could be likened to W. H. Auden. -Kilian McNamara, Wizard Study Guide. More than any other poet in Australia, Bruce Dawe has assimilated the influences of his generation of poets and combined them in a set of interests and a style that spread across from popular poetry into literature. -K. L. Goodwin, York Notes