Out of the Blocks by Ellen Shelly, Puncher & Wattmann 2023, was launched by Les Wicks at the Glebe Hotel, NSW, on 11 February 2024

I was excited when I first ran across Ellen Shelley’s early poems. Here was a person who approached words and the world with a different slant. Like so many of us, I crave the new in poetry. If she kept on writing I thought this would be a major new voice in Australian poetry.

I was impatient in recent years. When is this woman going to get a book out? Mind you, so many people rush to get their first book out and is a feeble, half formed thing that emerges. Thomas Keneally once told me the worst mistake in his literary life was having his first book published.

But now we have before us we have Out of the Blocks from Puncher & Wattmann. I’m excited all over again. The grace and dexterity in every piece in this collection might suggest to some that this work emerged smoothly. But many of us know different — here is a woman who really worked the words, read so extensively and dialogued with a range of leading practitioners to hone her poetic vision. I can’t think of another first book with such clarity of voice and original use of language.

There’s a certain relentless quality to this book, a refusal to stand still. “To falter becomes a fissure for the grime”. This is both an engine driving us through this uneasy though forgiven world alongside a promise that the explorations evident in this book are not the end of the story, just the beginning.

Pairing with that relentlessness is also a restlessness which also affixes the reader in the experiential entirety of this book. “I find the hidden meaning of something then drop it”

Anyone can say “waiting to be let in” but I imagine Ellen picking up that line, looking closely, perhaps even interrogating it. By the time the phrase is released it has a new depth, an inherent fascination —“wading to be let in”. People often say there’s a vacancy when children leave home but we see it anew when she writes “you get to keep/ the holes”. Again, an old phrase is picked up and reborn vibrant “There are too many cars in this one-horse town”

Just as language is approached from miscreant angles, so too the subject matter can surprise. I think this book contains the first ever poem about sleep apnoea — and contrary to preconceptions it is a gentle, beautiful piece entirely devoid of murder plots which I’d expect. Equally, I was fascinated by her poems discussing military service.

We are rewarded with perception throughout the book. This sometimes complicated, sometimes appalling world is seen somewhat differently when we read “the diligence of guilt” “What matters lies in the periphery of a thing”, “Control is a cruise/ you don’t own a button for.” Or “too much asked of me/ is to receive too much of you”. Real insight. Universal insight.

Finally, there is the incisive & profoundly original imagery throughout the book. Like a good protestant boy I saved the best for last. This was a the first thing that made me sit up and pay attention to her work and we are rewarded with a rich selection of vivid images throughout: “sacrifice has a ravenous appetite”, ‘a song with arms” ‘water wrinkles the words, a little — changes the lines”, “even/ the tongue in my mouth/ has gut feelings” “like paper we tore” ‘beauty left/ on the last ship with coal between her teeth”, “like broken glass we shine” and “salt becomes another emotion”.

This book is a joy to read. Buy a couple of copies, spread the word! I declare it officially launched!

 – Les Wicks

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Over 45 years Les Wicks has performed widely across the globe. Published in over 450 different magazines, anthologies & newspapers across 36 countries in 15 languages. Les conducts workshops & runs Meuse Press which focuses on poetry outreach projects like poetry on buses & poetry published on the surface of a river. His 15^th book of poetry is Time Taken – New & Selected (Puncher & Wattmann, 2022).

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Out of the Blocks by Ellen Sheely is avalable from https://puncherandwattmann.com/product/out-of-the-blocks/