Ways to Say Goodbye – Anne Kellas
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Ways to Say Goodbye
Ways to Say Goodbye is Anne Kellas’s fourth collection. In language shaped by dream and symbol, the poems elaborate the ‘condition of winter’ quoted in the epigraph, in different ways. The visual arts and the sweep of history are as present as birds and angels. Against a backdrop of the cliffs, shores, storms and mountains of the ‘frail island’ of Tasmania, the poems criss-cross trails of observation, memory, silence and grief. The atmosphere of the book as a whole is metaphysical. The poet’s grief over both the loss of her younger son François to an accidental overdose and a world riven by climate change, are often seen from above, lifted above clouds and the ‘human condition’, but they remain firmly rooted in the world and human language. "The paradoxical, shimmering images in these poems do the work of understanding, grieving, and remembering in ways that are beyond being paraphraseable. Oblivion and knowledge seem to co-exist. These poems … are gifts that teach us how to ‘read the mind of clouds’" – Kevin Brophy.
Read an extract from the book (PDF 154.4 KB)
About the author
Anne Kellas has lived on the unceded land of Hobart/Nipaluna since 1986, having spent the first half of her life in Southern Africa and the UK. Since the 1980s, her writing has appeared in a wide variety of anthologies and journals in Australia and elsewhere, and her work has appeared in the shortlists and longlists for prizes such as the Bruce Dawe National Poetry Prize, the ACU Prize for Poetry and the inaugural Liquid Amber Poetry Prize. Her 2015 collection, The White Room Poems, was shortlisted in the 2017 Tasmanian Premier’s Literary Prizes. Her work has been translated into Portuguese, and earlier books, Isolated States (2001) and Poems from Mt Moono (1989), have been translated in their entirety into Ukrainian. Anne has recently appeared on the Poet’s Corner podcast (WestWords Sydney/David Adès), and she has been a mentor to many Tasmanian poets. Ways to Say Goodbye is her fourth collection, published by Liquid Amber Press in 2023. Her website is annekellas.com