Poems from the Swan Coastal Plain

WEST AUSTRALIANA POETRY
Australia is the ancient southern continent, with modern cities, a vast outback landscape, and the world’s oldest living culture. Sandra Roe’s poems will transport you to this immensely beautiful land – and especially to the city of Perth in Western Australia, the world’s most isolated capital city. You will find a shimmering landscape formed over millennia. You will learn about the lives of birds, such as the black swans and cormorants who live and feed in habitat on the central city’s edge. She gives her impressions of some of the last remaining wetlands on the Swan Coastal Plain. The poet has a sense of history: her forebears arrived in 1829 (John Septimus Roe), and she shows her awareness and appreciation of 60,000 years of Indigenous culture. Her poems convey the tension of modern living in an old but fragile environment. You will also learn about the stunning beauty of Australia’s eastern side, with the Sydney Harbour and the Sydney Opera House. And of course, Australians are inveterate travellers; the poet gives her impressions of Italy, and especially the region of Tuscany.
pp. 99 First Edition #260423