Reviews of Ways to Say Goodbye: Poems by Anne Kellas
“… such a knockout that I could hardly believe anyone in Australia could respond to personal catastrophe with such artistic intelligence, fortitude, and grace that this book reveals”
“Artistic intelligence, fortitude, and grace: Michael Sharkey reviews ‘Ways to Say Goodbye’ by Anne Kellas”
This review casts a retrospective eye over Kellas’s earlier collections of poetry while reviewing Ways to Say Goodbye (August 2023, Liquid Amber Press).
Excerpts from the review:
“… tenderness … is characteristic of Kellas’s poetry of intimate relationships. It’s what appeals in her poetry to non-literary readers, as well as to the well-read and erudite. We recognise affection without reaching for theories within the works themselves as to why we should or might do so. We distrust, as Keats asserted, poetry that has a design on us. I think Kellas’s poetry succeeds magnificently against the grain of poetry that is organised according to a plan. It has the simplicity of direct speech and of genuine human-to-human discourse. It’s a defence of connection and, taken all round, a model of how to do so instinctively, by relying on the veracity of one’s emotions—as Gwen Harwood, Kellas’s sometime co-conspirator against pretentiousness in poetry and in performance of music, understood and exemplified. It has to do with the art of pleasing, even when the subject is dour.”
“Kellas is a richly rewarding poet who merits the widest possible readership, as well as acclamation by the most discriminating readership.”
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The White Room Poems
Chris Ringrose's review appeared in Australian Poetry Journal (v.6, n.2, December 2016) READ HERE...
Geoff Page's review appeared in The Australian, Review Section, 13 February 2016.
Isolated States
Anne Kellas brings “both wit and deep seriousness to her poetry” with themes that “take up the kind of apocalyptic vision of Doris Lessing”
– Kevin Brophy, review of Isolated States, in famous reporter, no. 24, December 2001
Poems from Mt Moono
"Courage comes across as the true subject of her writing ... (Her poems) help us to identify the violence which permeates our lives in so many subtle and unsubtle forms. They show us strategies for survival."
– Robert Berold, in a review of Poems from Mt Moono published in New Contrast, 1990.