Hobart Bookshop: Anne Kellas: ‘The White Room Poems’
The Hobart Bookshop. First published December 2
LAUNCH
Anne Kellas : ‘The White Room Poems’
Hobart Bookshop, 22 Salamanca Square, Hobart
Wednesday 16th December, 2015 at 5.30 p.m. Launched by Robert Cox
‘We long for poetry that was never likely to be made, and now miraculously made, we would not want
to change a word of it. This poetry is like that. It is a township of birds, an alphabet of clouds, a rain of
wondrous phrases that will take you to the unbearable fringes where …
‘Tonight’s train goes by,
sounds like a wounded beast.
In the heart of the night,
everything holds its breath.
‘The White Room Poems are a mother’s poems to the son she has lost … How is it possible that they can
be so beautiful and strong when they are so lost in this young man’s cloud of unbeing? These poems never
flinch, but that makes them even more fragile. These poems never stop singing in speech but that does
not lift them from their stern night. These poems press on into the reader’s heart, into anyone who has
loved, into any parent who recognises what this kind of loss might, just might, sound like if it was made
into poetry.’ – Kevin Brophy
‘It is difficult for a poet to learn from Paul
Celan and remain a poet. André du Bouchet is
one, and Anne Kellas is another. It is perhaps
even more difficult for a poet to learn, as poet,
from intense grief: The White Room Poems is a
sanctuary where such grief is realized while also
continuing to ache.’ – Kevin Hart
“Through the use of elliptical lines and concise,
often surprising imagery, Kellas has forged a set
of poems which interrogate both livelihood
and language while remaining true to the
lyric groundswell from which they spring. Her
unerring focus on place and experience is
simultaneously precise and visionary, and makes
The White Room Poems a reading experience to
savour.” – Kelwyn Sole, South African poet and academic
“These poems, won out of grief and daring,
wondrously sing and shine.” – Pam Schindler, author of A sky you could fall into
“Here is a poet who knows that poetry speaks
the unspeakable, when no other language will do.” – Lisa Jacobson, author of South in the World