Dennis Haskell

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Biographical note:  Dennis Haskell was born in Sydney but has lived in Perth since 1984. He is the author of six collections of poetry, including All the Time in the World, published by Salt in 2006, and twelve volumes of literary scholarship and criticism. He edited the literary magazine, Westerly, from 1985–2009, and is Professor of English and Cultural Studies at The University of Western Australia. Dennis Haskell is currently Chair of the Literature Board of the Australia Council.

BIC Basic

EAN13:  9781844715275
ISBN:  9781844715275
Author:  Dennis Haskell
Title:  Acts of Defiance
Series:  Salt Modern Poets
Product class:  BC
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  CTCH1
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  15-Sep-10
Extent:  160pp
Height:  216 mm
Width:  140 mm
Thickness:  12 mm
Weight:  240 gms
Supplier:   Gardners Books
Supplier:   Ingram Book Group
Supplier:   Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability:  NP
Price:  GBP 10.99
Price:  USD 16.95
Rights:  World

Short description/annotation:  This is a collection of poems about love, the nature of truth, individual identity and contemporary issues such as the Iraq war, written with clarity and strong feeling. The book has none of the self-absorption or obscurity of much modern poetry, and seeks to speak meaningfully to people, including those who don’t normally read poetry, in an often bewildering contemporary world.

Main description:  The title of Dennis Haskell’s Acts of Defiance comes from a poem which proclaims every human attempt to discover meaning “an act / of defiance of death”. Drawn from thirty years of writing, Haskell’s Selected Poems provides explorations of the nature of truth and the meaning – if any – of human emotions. Language stands here in varying relations to the world, sometimes fragile, sometimes funny, sometimes elegiac, in portraying a deep link between a mysterious transcendent and the ordinary. Even in their cosmopolitanism – the settings include China, France, Germany, Singapore, and the USA – the poems maintain a tough minded sense of reality that might be seen to be deeply Australian. The subjects range from contemporary approaches to love and death, to the nature of happiness, conceptions of God, Aboriginal painting, and French Resistance leaders.

Is love meaningless or utterly valuable? Are the meanings of human life discovered or made? Is identity rooted in place or flying about a globalised world? The book explores meanings underwritten by death, and explores a breadth of language and huge range of emotions.

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Unpublished endorsement:  Haskell does not shy away from the difficulty of conveying deep, universal emotions without sentimentality

Geoff Page

Unpublished endorsement:  Haskell understands a range of poetic genres and is equally at home in all of them.

Geoff Page