Breaker

Poetry. Sue Sinclair is the direct inheritor of the great early 20th Century German poet, Rilke: she possesses intense lyrical vision, steeped in wonder at the existence of the world, and a kind of grief at our inability to lose ourselves in it completely. Her perception is acutely focused and rigorous; and she is acutely self-aware. She is not afraid of words like "beauty" or "being," yet, because of the intensity of her vision, she never uses them as cliches. Her gift for metaphor is astonishing and may remind some readers of the young Roo Borson. "In these poems, `the world lifts its head/and clarity pours from its back.' The world-reading in Sue Sinclair's BREAKER, the ontology of the book, is magical and feels deeply true. All objects here exercise the power of a profound affective gravity; cities, islands, gardens and the savouring mind itself pull and accommodate the one who looks hard. Sinclair's poems shape us to be just this sort of fierce viewer. They have a moving, extraordinary facility to discern, taste, the sweet depths of things"--Tim Lilburn.