The Kingfisher's Soul

Robert Adamson has been nourished for much of his life by Australia's Hawkesbury River. His poetry praises nature - red in tooth and claw - and celebrates existence as a mythological quest. "The Kingfisher's Soul" is his first new collection to be published in Britain since "Reading the River: Selected Poems" (2004). Extending the territory covered by the later poems in that selection, "The Kingfisher's Soul" takes Adamson's personal Romanticism and daring lyricism to a higher imaginative level. He confronts a range of contradictions: how the fish he kills to make a living also sustain his vision as poet; and how he uses birds from the sky for his paintings. He wonders about the existence of God as well as the different meanings of souls of humans, birds, fish and animals. Some of the poems look at war, and many come back again to love.