Product Description
A wild ride across language, personalities and propositions that is ultimately about hope. These poems are often humorous and fierce, a mix of accessible and dense, concentrating on capturing the vernacular in unusual daily occurrences.
“Sea of Heartbeak (Unexpected Resilience) …is determined to take the reader on a dive beneath. It took me on a voyage which I found bracing and stimulating at the same time as it did not turn away from the discomforting reality of the costs our lives inflict on our futures”.
—Rae Desmond Jones
For 35 years Les Wicks has been active in the Australian literary community. He has been a guest at most of the nation’s literary festivals, toured widely and been published in well over 250 different newspapers, anthologies and magazines across 17 countries in 9 languages. He has also worked as a publisher and editor.
Seen as both a ‘stage’ and ‘page’ poet, his work is a mix of accessibility and dense use of language. He is a master of capturing the vernacular. His poems can be both humorous and fierce, often in the same poem.
REVIEWS
“Before you open Les Wick’s latest collection he’s already playing with your eye and your mind: the title is a joke and an admonition: it’s “Sea of Heartbeak”, not “Heartbreak”. A sentimental cliché becomes a warning – take nothing for granted.
Inside is much serious intent and more jokes, but the most immediate feature is Wick’s striking poetic technique, developed over 35 years of publication.”
JOHN UPTON, Mascara Literary Review
“I would argue that Les has hit his straps with this book, has in fact unsuspected resilience. It is, I would say, prismatic, even luminous”
JOHN WATSON, Southerly
