Product Description
This is a selection from a poet who believes that Australia still has countless stories to tell, re-tell and imagine. These are works by someone intrigued by the varieties of poetic forms, who is a lover of verse satire and a believer in the contemporary power of dramatic monologues. Tradition is for Alan Wearne of continuing relevance since as he tells us: ‘I work for an outfit called Narrative Verse in English, company founder being a man called Geoff, Geoff Chaucer.’
Alan Wearne rampages through the timid, dismal and so terribly polite terrain of contemporary English language culture and poetry, blowtorch at hand, laying waste the cant, hypocrisy, delusional self-narratives, rapaciousness and just plain unkindness, be it politicians or other insalubrious types. Wearne’s energy, range and variety are without equal, whether in free verse, rhyming couplets or villanelle. Any poet of equivalent unbridled intelligence and coiled ferocity would be denied entry in America at Customs or put under house-arrest by the local Woke Taliban. A very naughty boy is on the loose. Bravo. – August Kleinzahler
The depth and breadth of these narratives and monologues are extraordinary. Wearne’s narrative strategies, psychological insights, and understanding of history, politics, as well as the dynamics that can play out in relationships are gripping. These poems explore and reveal much of the dark underbelly in Australian society and culture. Public and private worlds play off against each other in searing ways. Wearne is a master of tone and voice, of giving his poems a colloquial authenticity few can match. His wit and technical skill are enduring pleasures. – Judith Beveridge
REVIEWS
“The near-religious title of Alan Wearne’s new selection of poems, Near Believing, gives an impression of bathos and deprecation, while nevertheless undermining structures of belief, as represented in the book; at times this belief is explicitly Christian, but can also be seen more generally as belief in others, or in the suburban way of life…while modest-seeming, highly ambitious – and, in another irony, further evokes the pathos, and hopelessness, of wanting to believe. …Near Believing is the perfect entry point into the everyday complexities of Wearne’s world.” MICHAEL FARRELL, Australian Book Review (paywalled)
“Wearne’s impressionistic survey of social milieux across postwar Australian history is a major contribution to our literature, and deserves a wide general readership.” JOHN HAWKE, Australian Book Review (paywalled)
“Wearne is a great poet with a freak hypersensitivity to people, their inner lives, relationships and conflicts, and the familial, educational and suburban elements that make them what they are. This sensitivity allows him to tap into the almost infinite complexity of our subjectivities.” MARTIN DUWELL, Australian Poetry Review
