Writing to the Wire (ed by Dan Disney & Kit Kelen, UWA Publishing)

What place is there for poetry in Australia’s highly divisive and politicised public debate about refugees and immigration? It’s a question the editors of this significant new collection of both Australian and refugee poets pose for themselves. Dan Disney and Kit Kelen suggest poetry can ‘offer us new ways to understand mundane injustices [and] new ways to speak out’. Grand claims, perhaps, but ones borne out by the often remarkable works collected in this volume. This book features some of our leading poets—Philip Salom, Peter Boyle, Fay Zwicky, John Tranter, Samuel Wagan Watson, joanne burns, and more, writing alongside refugees, many of whom have chosen to remain anonymous (for reasons that are sadly all too obvious). Their poems drive home what poetry can offer—explorations of how different races see each other, and how connection can occur in spite of difference; explorations of anger, dissent, despair, powerlessness, pity and compassion. Many of these poems have made me ‘look and think and feel again’ about this issue, as the editors intended. Many Australians, including secondary students, will find much in this book that will help them better understand the plight of refugees and how we as a society have responded to that plight. With this volume, poetry has asserted its unique value to help us heed ‘the best advice of our hearts’.

Andrew Wilkins is director of Wilkins Farago and former publisher at Thorpe-Bowker

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