Book of Ethel

The subject of this work is the author's maternal great grandmother. Born in 1872, in St Just, Cornwall, Ethel emigrated to Australia at the age of fifteen. Beginning married life in a one-room tin shack outside Mildura, she published articles and her own collection of short stories, moving house frequently and raising six children along the way. These poems are compact and precise micro-portraits in verse. With characteristic adherence to formal, almost claustrophobic strictures set against an animate sense of buoyancy and breath, Albiston explores the tension between high poetic artifice and the small moments of an ordinary life. Praise for the sonnet according to 'm'It is tempting to describe this collection as flawless. The placement of each poem, and each syllable in each poem, is brilliantly orchestrated - Judges' Report, NSW Premier's Literary Awards ... full of brisk, innovative and dove-tailing sonnets, and each a model of concise verbal invention. - John Jenkins Southerly [These] poems boldly engage in a psychic wrestle with the world, pushing at the extremities of both orderliness and confusion. - Michelle Borzi Island