Paper Bark Press
The Owner of My Face
2002, 216 pages, softcover, 215x150mm
ISBN 1 877004 87 1
Cover photograph: 'The Immigrant Daughter' by Juno Gemes, in collaboration with Catherine Hassall - Culture Lab
John Kinsella has made a selection from Rodney Hall's many books of poetry that is contemporary and political in orientation. Hall has been a pathfinder in both Australian poetry and English-language poetry in general, with his innovative use of voice, fragments and sequence.
Building complex narratives of allusion, playing with notions of self and identity, Hall predates the mid-1970s concern in American poetry with the 'lyrical'. Rich in historical and mythological reference, Hall unites a deep understanding of traditional form with innovative rhythms and a unique blending of the musical and the visual. His is an 'entire' poetry — interactive, multimedia, genre-crossing. In the early 1960s Hall was thirty years ahead of his time.
The book-length sequence-poem 'Black Bagatelles' is included in The Owner of My Face in its entirety, as are other sequences, such as 'Forty Beads on a Hangman's Rope' and 'The Autobiography of A Gorgon'. An introductory essay of 1500 words by John Kinsella accompanies the selection.
'Hall has reached the far lands of his tongue. Nothing is readymade. These poems hold us at once with the force of music.'
~ Gwen Harwood
'Far ahead of any poems I have read written by my younger contemporaries.'
~ Robert Graves
'A thrillingly smart and juicy writer.'
~ The New York Times
'He immediately established his place among the best writers of his time.'
~ The Saturday Review, USA