Later Unearthed
The title poem of Later Unearthed discourses upon the inexorably preposterous House of Saxe-Coburg und Gotha, in the person of King George V. The tale of James Macpherson, who was catapulted into the belly of a whale, is just as odd, though sadder. Paul Magee has a sharp eye and musical ear, with a tone that is always fellow human. The middle sequence in the book, Dreaming in Bourke, is an account of time in the Barkindji town of Bourke, outback New South Wales, where cotton sucks the river dry, dragonflies mirror sunrise and floods lie in wait till they flood. There are translations from Silver and Medieval Latin, and a selection of modernist Russians, lamenting catastrophe or foreboding revolution.
Writing is a world
where oceans are tiny.
Paul Magee studied in Melbourne, Moscow, San Salvador and Sydney. He is author of From Here to Tierra del Fuego (2000), Cube Root of Book (2006), Stone Postcard (2014) and Suddenness and the Composition of Poetic Thought (2022). Paul is Professor of Poetry at the University of Canberra, where he directs the Centre for Creative and Cultural Research (CCCR).
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