Product Description
‘There are those who, facing difficulty, do not allow themselves to be broken.’ In this remarkable collection, Todd Turner examines the redemptive power of poetry amidst human suffering, using the life of John Keats as a poignant lens for love, loss, and transcendence. These finely wrought poems align vulnerability with a ‘ red resilience’, vibrating with the grace and gravity of Alice Oswald’s observation that ‘poems are literally made of breath.’ Through dialogue, allegory, and concise form, Turner brings us into the lived experience of one engaging the world with interior grit and a startling, translucent truth. Breathwork is as masterful as it is resonant with the hard-won wisdom of a poet deeply attuned to the shaping forces of grief, trauma, and suffering, and to the corrective powers of love and belonging. Turner’s poems are that rare combination of grit and beauty, re and polish, poise and risk-taking. His sequences of short pieces build into beautifully weighted larger structures. The poems which celebrate the life of Keats are odes to resilience and endurance. This book is lucid, immersive and bountiful. Todd Turner is one of our most highly skilled poets. —Judith Beveridge
Praise for Thorn: A poet in ne form, wielding language with an enviable control. —Caitlin Wilson, Mascara Literary Review
…worthy of Les Murray at his best.—Geoff Page, The Weekend Australian
He seems to me outstanding among his generation. —Robert Gray
