Synopses & Reviews
John Newtons latest collection of poetry ponders the deep relationship between people and landscapes, and yet, in spite of such familiarity, there are questions yet to be answered, attachments and passions that dont let go. Romantic, hyperbolic, painterly, and plot-driven, Family Songbook is a New Zealand pastoral in a different key.
Review
“Newton is blessed with the kind of keen eye that can spot the flush on a black-backed gulls bill and ‘the chill pewter light on the snowgrass. Hard looking informs these poems as well as hard thinking and magpie reading. A splendid wry wit guides and shapes the book. . . . We all carry in our heads private landscapes—the geography of our youth refracted by memory, changing hopes and desires, personal mythology, family history. Newtons songbook re-examines and revitalizes half-forgotten possibilities.” —Iain Sharp, reviewer, critic, and columnist, New Zealand Listener magazine
About the Author
John Newton taught in the English departments at the University of Melbourne and the University of Canterbury. He has published two previous books of poems, The Double Rainbow: James K. Baxter, Ngati Hau and the Jerusalem Commune and Lives of the Poets.