Wind-up Birdman of Moorabool Street

In this stunning, visionary collection, A. Frances Johnson offers cautionary threnodies that muse on environment and the endurance of theme park notions of the natural, in spheres poetic and beyond. This is a richly varied collection: among moving lyrics of loss are dystopian visions, such as the last living bird with its wings and vocal chords sludged by the oily depredations of Exxon Valdez, hummingbird drones indiscriminately raiding and killing, and hybrid bird-humans blurring the boundaries between nature and culture to survive. 'This extraordinary book ranges from the "the torturer's salon" to "the idea of peace", from spy drones to The Little Prince. While A. Frances Johnson brilliantly exposes the dangerous world of politics, colonialism (past and present) and warmongering, she also renders the warm spaces of love and domesticity with clear-eyed power. The collection's numerous birds, such as "the last bird", "the birds that cried wolf", and the eponymous wind-up birdman of Moorabool Street, all stand for Johnson's extraordinary inventiveness and originality. No-one, in the long history of the Australian "bird poem", has written about birds like this. Johnson's poetry is metaphorically rich, sharp as a pin, funny, and emotionally devastating. It demands attention.' - David McCooey