I Love Poetry

Winner, Queensland Literary Award

In I Love Poetry Michael Farrell continues to affirm poetry as a mode of thinking. His poems aspire to both memorability and meaning, and to invoke new Australian realities – ‘the rhyme’s a moral that becomes a fence; a fallen-down fence is a joy forever.’ The tone is playful and ironic, more under the skin of the mind than in its face. Poems like ‘Into a Bar’, in which Blue Poles and INXS entertain themselves with digital prune juice and a video burger, or ‘Cate Blanchett and the Dif cult Poem’, with the actor and Waleed Aly, add new dimensions to Australian icons. ‘Great Poet Snowdome’ is a story of kitsch involving Sydney and a pope – a recurring gure in the book, since he reappears as Pope Pinocchio, alongside the Professor of Milk and Sugar. There’s a Mad Max riff (‘Put Your Helmet On’); a One Direction revision (‘Drag Me Down’); and new appreciations of lyrebirds, kangaroos and chocolate frogs. There is Sid Vicious and there are lamingtons. There is everything that loves poetry: Weetbix, Iron Maiden T-shirts, motorbikes, and you.