Carol and Ahoy

The backdrop of Carol and Ahoy is the Goulburn River and its floodplains around Shepparton. Ancestry and watchful reflection combine seamlessly in these poems, which are always in search of "what is tactile and particular", be it a gum tree, an agave or the past. Simon West's fluid, ever-shifting gaze will be familiar to readers of his previous volumes. Waking on a Summer Morning I asked if verse were no more than a toy, then heard the blackbirds carol and ahoy and the traffic's tidal snare drum