Paper Bark Press
Mulberry Leaves New & Selected Poems 1970-2001
Robert Adamson
Edited by Chris Edwards, with a foreword by David Malouf
2001, 328 pages, softcover, 215x150mm
ISBN 1 876749 48 2
Cover photograph by Juno Gemes
Mulberry Leaves brings together a selection of Robert Adamson's poetry from 1970 to 2001. The book is a valuable guide to Adamson's work over the past three decades, and includes an index of titles and an index of first lines. Adamson's recent poems, written between 1999 and 2001, include 'On not seeing Paul Cezanne', 'David Aspden's yellow tree', 'Letter to James McAuley', 'Letter to Chris Brennan' and 'Mulberry Leaves'.
This newer work is accompanied by poems written between 1970 and 1999, selected from Adamson's highly acclaimed books, Canticles on the Skin (1970), The Rumour (1971), Swamp Riddles (1974), Cross the Border (1977), Where I Come From (1979), The Law at Heart's Desire (1982), The Clean Dark (1989), The Brutality of Fact (1993), Waving to Hart Crane (1994), The Language Of Oysters (1997), Meaning (1998) and Black Water (1999). Images from the covers of each of these books – by artists including Garry Shead, Juno Gemes, Robert Duncan, David Aspden and Gria Shead – are also featured throughout Mulberry Leaves.
'Robert Adamson's Mulberry Leaves is a new "song of myself", one that sets both "song" and "self" at risk. To read these brutal and beautiful lyrics is to undergo an experience – a journey and a test – and whoever can last the distance will have been changed in more than one way. To live with the work of this great poet is to live more deeply and more warily.'
~ Kevin Hart
'Robert Adamson is that rare instance of a poet who can touch all the world and yet stay particular, local to the body he's been given in a literal time and place. He is as deft and resourceful a craftsman as exists, and his poems move with a clarity and ease I find unique. He has savoured his life, felt it at each moment, and what he has written is its vivid and enduring testament.'
~ Robert Creeley
Robert Adamson was born in Sydney in 1943 and grew up in Neutral Bay and on the Hawkesbury River, New South Wales. He has successfully combined the careers of writer, editor and publisher. From 1970 to 1985 he edited New Poetry magazine, and in 1988, with Juno Gemes, he established Paper Bark Press. He has published numerous books of poems and prose, and has been the recipient of many awards and prizes.