Ocean Island

Julian Croft?s imaginative territory will be familiar to many from his earlier collections of poetry ? a swathe of the NSW coast and hinterland, and its people. The intensity of the meditation of self into society and place feels new.Ocean Island has seven meditative arcs that scope onto one another, presenting key dimensions of a life in recall; with an exotic and exact vocabulary for nuance, scientific, philosophical or local. From narrow walls of childhood 'games? to the topography of Newcastle ? its lake land, sea-verge, heavy industry and earthquake ? to the pristine surfaces of New England, place becomes the evocation of a life.And time is its medium. Julian Croft writes poems of a classical poise; their vibrancy is in poising, with a historical understanding, upon change. Water and earth, the elements of place, are part of it. See for instance the beautiful final ode.Julian Croft grew up in Newcastle, NSW, where he was born in 1941. He spent the late 1960s in Europe and Africa, and taught at the University of Sierra Leone, 1968?70. Since then he has lived in Armidale in northern NSW, where he was a teacher of literature at the University of New England until recently. He has been publishing poems since 1962. His first collection, 'Breakfasts in Shanghai? (A&R, 1984) was the Asia/Pacific winner of the Commonwealth Poetry Prize. A&R published his novel, 'Their Solitary Way? (1985), and a second book of poems, 'Confessions of a Corinthian? (1991).