Shouldering Pine

Shouldering Pine is a book-length nature poem that is also a critical meditation on the pastoral. Specifically, the concept of the natural world as inherently calming or peaceful. It interweaves the anxieties of the personal and immediate with those of the collective and long-term.

The book touches on general anxiety disorder, grief, climate change and the coronavirus pandemic. It is written in a minimalist fashion and can be consumed in one sitting. The idea is for the reader to feel out of breath, but for the experience to be over relatively quickly, like a panic attack. Alternatively, the reader can dip in and out as though each page is an individual poem. Importantly, the speaker’s trauma is never explicitly stated: alluding to the difficulty in finding anxiety’s source and pushing back against what’s been identified as ‘trauma porn’. Human, open and wise, Shouldering Pine is unique in contemporary Australian poetry for its understated virtuosity, humour and relentless clarity