Brian Brock

Summer Harvest Brian Brock

'With Summer Harvest, the Australian poet Brian Brock has offered us a feast of issues and moments worthy of serious consideration. His poetry is a conversation, a correspondence, a way of talking about things that truly matter; the paradoxical decay and drift of natural habitats beside human rights violations. We learn about the poet too; his service to country, his encyclopaedic knowledge of flora and fauna, his incredible grasp of the importance of marine biology, his lifelong interest in astronomy and how this awareness always provides the poet with direction, sometimes purpose against the backdrop of an often disorientating and complex world. His gift for announcing, for stating those things that many of us would overlook, is at times exceeded by his ability to fashion language to shape the mundane into an evolving and mutable reality.' - Richard Hillman

'In all the work of Brian Brock, we have a scientist - a biologist - who is equally a poet. The felt life is in all he writes, whether it is place, people, often connected with the past, the near and distant past. In letters to friends, in descriptions of birds, predator and prey, in love with them all, always those verbs. 'Light' glows with them. He is at home in his country, in his backyard reading the constellations. In the time before dawn. In the sounds, the colours, the textures. And we are with him, delighting in the depth of observation, of his engagement with it all. Brian Brock offers a rich evocative harvest. Enjoy it with a glass of wine, coffee or a cup of tea. In 1985, I asked him to read to my Year 10 Advanced English class for students to meet the poet in the scientist. Now everyone can meet him in Summer Harvest.' - Erica Jolly