A Journal of Australian & International Cultural Reviews, News and Criticism.
One of the great gifts of these poems is Lucas’ expertise in making the familiar (such as a zoom meeting, a walk on the beach, seeing whales, a father’s belongings, an exploration of ‘the mind’s cabinet’ with a therapist) take on new clarity, a more generous one.
I was not prepared for the humour and humanity of these poems. Their sheer excellence.
This is penetrating yet humble poetry. Poems that fall off the tongue as gratifying as water. Some written in ways that remind me of curved, cascading terraced hillsides. Taking me to places of serenity by honouring our daily encounters found within ceilings and walls, fences and yards, streets and parks, skin and bone.
Never heavy, Rose Lucas’s voice is measured, paced – on the page and in the ear – with the rhythms of heartbeat or walking. The ‘murk’ of human obsessions and cruelty are suggested subtly, but in such a way that her poetics affirms a kind of grace. Despite its sometime pious or religious overtones, in Lucas’s poetry ‘grace’ itself is a word that the poet risks effectively.
Rochford Street Review 