Rare Bird

Intellectually ambitious and culturally engaged, these poems speak of Sartre, Zola and Jackson Pollock, of Western Australia's firewatch trees and Dubbo's gibbons, of the poet-batsman Stevie Smith, of youth and age. Ranging in form, James Lucas's poems ask to be reread rather than assented to, and are written in the belief that poetry is both solvent and fresh lick of paint.