Even in the Dark

Rose Lucas

Even in the Dark contains delicate poems of the lives of women and the exquisite beauty contained in the act of observation.

In a collection evoking luminescent images, Lucas explores nature and beauty, love and travel, in poems set at home and further afield. The entire lifespan is present here: in vitro to last hours; developing and then ageing bodies captured in whisps of lovely images. Images that also contain danger and risk. In this, her first volume of poetry, Rose Lucas has distilled years of writing into an impressive selection.

‘These poems are eloquent, graceful and meticulously candid. Their subjects are often local – but Rose Lucas’s major concern is the universal, how life’s balance sheet of wins and losses plays out over changes in time and place. Her control of line patterns, the vigour and clarity of her perceptions, her poise and light-footed music pervade the book in moving ways. There is a questing, vulnerable sensuousness here, yet the overall spirit of her poetry is reverence and joy.’ — Judith Beveridge

Awards

Won – 2014 Mary Gilmore Award for Poetry (Association for the Study of Australian Literature)

Praise for Even in the Dark:

[Lucas'] observant and mimetic style shimmers in a collage of confronting still-life portraits … In a society concerned with the big things, Lucas takes us back to the importance of small things.

CASSANDRA ATHERTON, AUSTRALIAN BOOK REVIEW

 

Rose Lucas is a name often found in anthologies, awards and shortlists, so it is no misnomer to call this first collection of poems long-awaited … Lucas’s poetry shimmers with the attention breathed across it, attunes our ear to desire, draws us close to the poetic image and whispers to us of a contemplative time eternally slipping beneath ‘present’ and ‘possibility’.

AMANDA JOY, CORDITE

Book details

PUBLICATION DATE: 2013
FORMAT: Paperback
EXTENT: 128 pages
SIZE: 198 x 128 mm
ISBN: 9781742585321
RIGHTS: World
CATEGORY: Poetry, Rose Lucas, UWAP Poetry,