Amplitude

Whether in the Venetian footsteps of Vivaldi, at the birth of the Owen and Sassoon violins or the score of a Sam Peckinpah film, these poems present a wealth of musical scenarios, all interconnected in their themes, tonality and form. Their reverberations reach across time and space, from England and Italy to the Australian outback, with the visual arts also in the mix. And yet the core of this book is deeply personal, the poet present as a ten-year-old boy, lover, grandfather – or anachronistic witness – at the various trials of life through which creativity and even humour somehow flourishes.

‘In his luminous and resonant new collection—poignant, witty, effortlessly inventive—Paul Munden explores a whole world of human experience through the lens of music. Like Proust’s madeleine, music opens up for him the amplitude of time and memory, from which he calls up places, occasions, lives mourned and celebrated, and a seemingly inexhaustible fund of cultural reference, its characters, real and imagined, ranged vividly before us.’

Stephen Edgar

‘Accomplished, elegant and a delight to read.  A wonderful new collection that crosses the borders between here and there – music and poetry, Australia and England (with a fittingly cacophonous cameo from Venice), plenty and grief – in its exploration of our human range, our amplitude. Intriguing and thoughtful, rigorous and heartfelt, I’ll be thinking about this beautiful book for a long time. ‘

Lisa Brockwell