Ocean Island

Julian Croft's imaginative territory will be familiar to many from his earlier collections of poetry - a swathe of the NSW coast and hinterland, and its people. The intensity of the meditation of self into society and place feels new. Ocean Island has seven meditative arcs that scope onto one another, presenting key dimensions of a life in recall; with an exotic and exact vocabulary for nuance, scientific, philosophical or local. From narrow walls of childhood 'games' to the topography of Newcastle - its lake land, sea-verge, heavy industry and earthquake - to the pristine surfaces of New England, place becomes the evocation of a life. And time is its medium. Julian Croft writes poems of a classical poise; their vibrancy is in poising, with a historical understanding, upon change. Water and earth, the elements of place, are part of it. See for instance the beautiful final ode.