Gathered Distance by Mark Tredinnick, Paperback, 9780995371842 | Buy online at The Nile
Departments
 Free Returns*

Gathered Distance

Poems

Author: Mark Tredinnick  

A new collection by Australian poet Mark Tredinnick, OAM (Birfish Books, 2020). The poems weave a journey through grief and loss into healing and transformation, speaking to themes of family and parenthood in a landscape of ecological awareness and tenderness.

Read more
Product Unavailable

PRODUCT INFORMATION

Summary

A new collection by Australian poet Mark Tredinnick, OAM (Birfish Books, 2020). The poems weave a journey through grief and loss into healing and transformation, speaking to themes of family and parenthood in a landscape of ecological awareness and tenderness.

Read more

Description

A Gathered Distance is a sustained and elegant lyric offering, weaving themes of loss and grief with transformation and beauty, which Chris Wallace-Crabbe describes as "a most subtle orchestration of loss". The collection speaks to our shared experiences of connection and separation; the complex dynamics of family and parenthood. In a time of ecological crisis, Mark's work affirms the value of "lyric resistance", poetry's mysterious way of making sense of things:

"When profound human emotion can recruit the lyric, the personal can become the human, the particular the archetypal. And a collapse of self can become a gathering of distances, a habitat of healing." - Mark Tredinnick.

From the title poem:

"...Be a garden in a city,

And be all the love you've lost. From all the unpropitious

Pieces tending toward a self, cultivate a solitude, harvest half

A life and make it whole. Gather all your distances, and

father all your orphan fears; hold them

Near, as a father might..."

Read more

Critic Reviews

“"Mark Tredinnick's are among the only long poems I find myself actively wanting to read. A few others these days can write well at length, but not many. His cadences bring the sense of a vertebrae meter, or perhaps of a keel, giving each poem the feel of a well-balanced canoe, sound enough to navigate deftly larger waters." -- Jane Hirshfield "One of our great poets of place--not just of geographic place, but of the spiritual and moral landscapes as well" -- Judy Beveridge "Like the singing of the birds he loves, Mark Tredinnick's poetry feels artlessly beautiful." -- Jean Kent "A most subtle orchestration of loss" -- Chris Wallace Crabbe "Mark Tredinnick's poetry works elegantly and intimately over a huge terrain." -- Martin Harrison "Tredinnick skilfully traces the vagaries and confusions of the individual psyche in the midst of so much everyday beauty" -- Peter Boyle”

"Mark Tredinnick's are among the only long poems I find myself actively wanting to read. A few others these days can write well at length, but not many. His cadences bring the sense of a vertebrae meter, or perhaps of a keel, giving each poem the feel of a well-balanced canoe, sound enough to navigate deftly larger waters." -- Jane Hirshfield

"One of our great poets of place--not just of geographic place, but of the spiritual and moral landscapes as well" -- Judy Beveridge

"Like the singing of the birds he loves, Mark Tredinnick's poetry feels artlessly beautiful." -- Jean Kent

"A most subtle orchestration of loss" -- Chris Wallace Crabbe

"Mark Tredinnick's poetry works elegantly and intimately over a huge terrain." -- Martin Harrison

"Tredinnick skilfully traces the vagaries and confusions of the individual psyche in the midst of so much everyday beauty" -- Peter Boyle

Read more

About the Author

MARK TREDINNICK-the author of The Little Red Writing Book, The Little Black Book of Business Writing, Almost Everything I Know, Fire Diary, The Blue Plateau, and a dozen other works of poetry and prose-is a celebrated poet, essayist, and writing teacher. His bestselling books on the writing craft are used in schools and university writing programs and have inspired a generation of writers. His many honours include the Montreal and Cardiff Poetry Prizes, The Blake, ACU, Ron Pretty, and Newcastle Poetry Prizes, two Premiers' Literature Awards, and the Calibre Essay Prize. The Blue Plateau, his landscape memoir, shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Prize. Sir Andrew Motion has said of Mark's work: "His is a bold, big-thinking poetry, in which ancient themes (especially the theme of our human relationship with landscape) are recast and rekindled." In addition to A Gathered Distance, two new collections of poetry, Walking Underwater and The Beginner's Guide appear in 2020, and Mark is at work on Reading Slowly at the End of Time, a memoir of a reading life. In 2018, Mark was writer in residence at the University of Sydney; and he was a guest of the Berlin Literature Festival, and the Xichang Qionghai Silk Road International Poetry Week. In April 2109 he was a guest of the International Writers' Program at the Lu Xun Literature Academy in Beijing; in November 2019, he was a guest of the Miluo International Poetry Festival. Mark travels and teaches widely, in schools and at festivals, and he works with the corporate sector as a mentor, speaker and copywriter. The father of five, he lives with his partner Jodie Williams on the Wingecarribee, southwest of Sydney. He teaches poetry and rhetoric at Sydney University and the University of Technology, Sydney.

Read more

More on this Book

A Gathered Distance is a sustained and elegant lyric offering, weaving themes of loss and grief with transformation and beauty, which Chris Wallace-Crabbe describes as "a most subtle orchestration of loss". The collection speaks to our shared experiences of connection and separation; the complex dynamics of family and parenthood. In a time of ecological crisis, Mark's work affirms the value of "lyric resistance", poetry's mysterious way of making sense of things: "When profound human emotion can recruit the lyric, the personal can become the human, the particular the archetypal. And a collapse of self can become a gathering of distances, a habitat of healing." - Mark Tredinnick. From the title poem: "...Be a garden in a city, And be all the love you've lost. From all the unpropitious Pieces tending toward a self, cultivate a solitude, harvest half A life and make it whole. Gather all your distances, and father all your orphan fears; hold them Near, as a father might..."

Read more

Product Details

Publisher
Birdfish Books
Published
1st February 2020
Pages
140
ISBN
9780995371842

Returns

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.

Product Unavailable