Tintinnabulum

Judith Beveridge’s much-anticipated new collection of poems, the first since her prize-winning Sun Music in 2018.

The poems in Tintinnabulum focus on animals, people, and places, though you could say that the real subject matter is the power of poetry, since the book explores how metaphor, simile, imagery and sound can reveal connections that are imaginative, revelatory and sometimes threatening. Beveridge’s creative use of language is most evident in the section of the book titled ‘Bizarre Bazaar’ – where she plays on lines and titles by Wallace Stevens (a fitting companion), and offers linguistic elaborations on familiar objects, and strange beliefs and customs. Each detail leads to others through association, there is multiplicity everywhere, and movement and energy, and this is as true of the poems which capture the particular features of animals, the transient effects of landscape, or the memories of people and places, as it is of the language-oriented poems.

There is a range of styles, lyrical, dramatic and narrative, which build on the achievements of poems in Beveridge’s previous collections. There is also an emotional range to the poems: some poems are joyous, celebratory, ecstatic – others humorous, elegiac, nostalgic – but the overall feeling is of the joy and richness of language.

Read an extract (first published in HEAT Series 3 Number 8).

Making use of a range of styles and emotional tones, Tintinnabulum focuses on places, people, and the power of poetry. It is a must-read, whether you consider yourself a frequent reader of poetry or not.Melanie Kembrey, Sydney Morning Herald

Beveridge believes in her materials, using the most fundamental features of her medium to produce extraordinary effects. Certainly, she is not uninterested in the ethical and political realms that linguistic representation inevitably engages, but she is forever attuned to the magical, if not sacred, powers inherent in the sound of language, as well as its endless potential for analogy… Like bells, these words demand attention.David McCooey, Australian Book Review

Beveridge revels in odd comparisons, risky anthropomorphisms and dazzlingly inventive connections that could stand up against any of [Wallace] Stevens’s best… Tintinnabulum aims less to score an existing reality than to tune it continually to another key, and Beveridge has astute hearing.
Grace Roodenrys, Meanjin

The poems are packed with vivid imagery and linguistic sound effects. Yet there is an acute attentiveness to subtle details, which has a kind of synaesthetic resonance with this tinkling of bells… What stays with me, though, is how intensely evocative, humane and sensitising these poems are, how memorable they are on an intellectual and bodily level.Andy Jackson, The Saturday Paper

Wild, thrilling, fun… This world bursts with sensory detail. The human narrator is so closely embedded as to seem stitched in, and we readers are equally immersed. Marcella Polain, The Conversation

Praise for Judith Beveridge:

Judith Beveridge is one of Australia’s truly great and enduring poets.Peter Boyle

Beveridge’s singular craftsmanship…offers us the rarest of pleasures: a ‘clear elaborated nectar’ that sings.Sarah Holland-Batt

There are few lyric poets…who write with Beveridge’s skill and power. It is not surprising that Beveridge is so esteemed among her fellow poets and readers.David McCooey, Cordite

Judith Beveridge has been an important voice in Australian poetry from the publication of her first collection…Her powerful ability to pay close attention and to evoke the specificities and the swirl of life about her has led to the production of a poetic oeuvre that speaks profoundly to the experience of being human.Rose Lucas, Plumwood Mountain