There was a reasonably positive review of My Iron Spine in the latest issue of Bravado (thanks to Harvey for letting me know).The reviewer, Tim Upperton, says he read it in one sitting. He says the 'poems aren't so much discrete inventions as they are an unfolding of an idea', and 'carefully crafted'.
He was most engaged by the first section - the 'autobiographical' poems. Particularly, it would seem, because he finds the book a bit too thematic in the later sections. I guess thematic isn't for everyone.
He picked out 'Gardening with Ursula Bethell' as a 'fine poem', and I was pleased he recognised it as a 'reading of Bethell's own gardening poems in From a Garden in the Antipodes' - though it isn't just about that - it's also about migrants, and making yourself a home in new places. Oh, and my own inabilities as a gardener.
