Cube Root of Book

Read this sequence through from page one, or start at any point and let its circles widen, or perhaps go to the lovely, light-syllabled final lyric and discover interesting ways back. The poems themselves breach back and forth to form a questing autobiography of precipitate adulthood. They breathe into this, for perspective, the author's fascination with some of the world's outer and inner mazes: art, media, brain dysfunction, political dysfunction, Russia. Each chapter includes Paul Magee's translation from one of the Latin poets. The book's symmetries and its title portend no arcane numerology. But they do make a point about necessity. The poems well up from roots; they are caught and crafted, as anyone will know who speaks them. Cube Root of Book was shortlisted for the Innovation Award at the 2008 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature.