The kool-aid of The Kool-Aid Dispenser stands for any number of things: grief, enduring institutionalized foolery, either the nonsense of handed-down beliefs, or their denial. And, backwards, it is about the power of language to discover and surprise us. The Kool-Aid Dispenser contains poems of loss, balanced by many poems that celebrate renewal and hope. The elegies which make up the first section move from the personal to the universal, concluding with a touching tribute to Musgrave’s friend, the late poet Jordie Albiston. The book’s last section, ‘Koels to Newcastle’, deals with the local and the domestic, yet as with the whole of the book, these are always placed squarely in relation to larger contexts through tensile and energetic lines which impel language towards being alive to the world.
‘A bathyspheric navigation of the oceanic soul’
Thomas Crosse
On Selected Poems:
‘David Musgrave’s Selected Poems is conclusive proof that its author is one of the most substantial and downright enjoyable poets at work in the country at the moment.’
Geoff Page, Australian Book Review
‘There is an enormous range on offer, and the collection is worth reading for these moments of realised maturity and humour, which are entirely appropriate in a poet as accomplished and acclaimed as Musgrave.’
James Antoniou, The Age/Sydney Morning Herald
‘A major talent you’ll be grateful you encountered.’
Luke Kennard