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Todd Turner's second book, Thorn, is an expansive and intimate collection whose poems open out with a strong and developed voice to encompass a broad range of subject matter. There are odes and elegies, stunning evocations of birds and animals, a sequence of elegant engagements with the work of influential poets, the rough and tumble of personal history and deep immersions in place. This is a poet with a reverence for the power of language who engages the large and small particulars of the world with intense resolve and resounding clarity.
Poetry can be understood as a visceral way of using language and Todd Turner's second book goes in this direction. He has a wider experience to draw on than most poets - a horseman and boxer on one side, a craftsman who creates artistic jewellery for a living on the other. He is better read than most contemporary poets and is respectful of the tradition which he draws on freely. He seems to me outstanding among his generation.
-Robert Gray
of Woodsmoke:
These poems are sensitive but tough and intelligent at the same time. - Martin Duwell
Todd Turner was co-winner of the Jean Cecily Drake-Brockman Poetry Prize. He is the author of one previous volume of poetry, Woodsmoke, which was short listed for the Mary Gilmore Prize and the Anne Elder Award. His poems have been published and anthologised widely. He lives and works in Parramatta.
