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'Cities makes playful and lyrical incursions into myth to explore the nature of grief for a mother while becoming a mother, and the difficulties of love, ranging from the extended sequence Persephone at 40 to a piercing series of poems about the death of White’s mother. A series of fragmentary ‘journal’ poems spanning from London to Berlin, arises in part from the tensions and strangeness of prolonged lockdown in both cities.'
(Production summary)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Petra White : Cities
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Poetry Review , no. 16 2021;
— Review of Cities 2021 selected work poetry 'Petra White’s Cities is a slim book by current standards but it is a dense one and there is a lot to be said for connecting it to its predecessor, Reading for a Quiet Morning. Both, for instance, begin by broaching crucial themes in the form of a revisiting and reconstruction of an existing myth. In Reading for a Quiet Morning the myth revisited was Ezekiel’s strange visions “at the edge of the Chebar” during the Babylonian exile. In Cities it is the old Greek story of Demeter and her lost daughter, Persephone. Taking an even longer perspective we can see that White has often employed sequences to work away at a theme and often these sequences are comprised of quite different poems. What strikes me about “How the Temple was Built” – the long sequence based around Ezekiel – and “Demeter”, is the way they each seem bifurcated, able to develop in two different directions.' (Introduction)
-
Petra White : Cities
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Poetry Review , no. 16 2021;
— Review of Cities 2021 selected work poetry 'Petra White’s Cities is a slim book by current standards but it is a dense one and there is a lot to be said for connecting it to its predecessor, Reading for a Quiet Morning. Both, for instance, begin by broaching crucial themes in the form of a revisiting and reconstruction of an existing myth. In Reading for a Quiet Morning the myth revisited was Ezekiel’s strange visions “at the edge of the Chebar” during the Babylonian exile. In Cities it is the old Greek story of Demeter and her lost daughter, Persephone. Taking an even longer perspective we can see that White has often employed sequences to work away at a theme and often these sequences are comprised of quite different poems. What strikes me about “How the Temple was Built” – the long sequence based around Ezekiel – and “Demeter”, is the way they each seem bifurcated, able to develop in two different directions.' (Introduction)
Last amended 4 Jun 2021 12:26:18
