Collected Blue Hills

In late 1980 Laurie Duggan began writing the Blue Hills poems as a kind of respite from the 'poetry wars'. The series mostly spread itself out over a number of books running in parallel with other more ostensibly 'worthy' projects like The Ash Range and The Epigrams of Martial. These poems now gathered here are at the heart of what Duggan sees as his poetic work. "Duggan's poetry has the virtue... that it never 'abandons the local'. Like Paul Blackburn, a poet Duggan manifestly admires, he builds his work out of what he finds in, on or about the premises." - Tony Baker, Jacket "Duggan has a brilliant eye and ear for those moments when the structures of reality peek through the agreed-upon surface of life." - Martin Duwell, Australian Poetry Review "I'm inclined to say his voice feels very Australian, and that said, I'm inclined to wonder if I can possibly say that." - Philip Salom, Australian Book Review Laurie Duggan grew up in Melbourne and has subsequently lived in Sydney and Brisbane. He moved to the UK in 2006 to Faversham, Kent, and is a regular reader on the London poetry circuit. Over the years he has taught in the areas of Art History and Cultural Studies and worked as a screenwriter, art critic and poetry editor. He has published twenty or so books of poems plus a critical work, Ghost Nation: Imagined Space and Australian Visual Culture 1901-1939 (UQP, 2001). His blog is at: graveneymarsh.blogspot.com