Suture Lines

David Musgrave: "The range of these poems is as extensive as their generosity. There are multiple foci for this collection: the origin of songbirds, librarians of Alexandria (Egypt, not Sydney) and the psychic import of conditions such as prosopagnosia (face blindness); but underpinning the collection as a whole is a warm intelligence which reminds us of the many forms and dimensions of love. This surprises with its gentle insistence, coupled with an acutely inquiring poetic mind. 'Love is an eyelid', the poem Cold Wisdom memorably tells us, and in several enjoyable blinks this collection affirms and delights in this proposition." Caitlin Maling: "Paul Scully's second collection Suture Lines is a book in thrall with language, for as Scully asks us 'who could not love a word like crocus'? Like the birdsong that populates so many of these poems, Suture Lines is a chorus, lush, full-throated, heteroglossic and polyvocal. It is a book that looks outward, its five sections travelling the breadth of Scully's unique influences. We are guided through the Australian landscape, the Persian Classic The Conference of Birds, the libraries of Alexandria, before landing back in Australia. Warm, nourishing and reverberating with spirit, Suture Lines deepens with each reading." Judith Beveridge: "His poetry is as exceptional as any I have come across in my ten years of teaching. He always pushes his work imaginatively, and approaches it with a spirit of wonder of possibilities he can explore and achieve. His poems are finely accomplished, his language polished and his range of subject matters and interests are very broad." On 'The Conference of the Birds': Kate Lilley: "The poetic sequence is really impressive - sophisticated, elegant and exploratory."