Small-Scale Observations

The poems in James Sutherland-Smith's eighth collection move from the garden into the neighbourhood of "a down-at-heel Hapsburg town" and then range into the nearby forest, the personal and the past. Borders are crossed and seemingly insignificant creatures suddenly gain visionary dimensions. The title poem recalls a poet whose attention to the small-scale made his work seem minor, yet as Hardy wrote "he noticed such things," a heedfulness absent in a contemporary world where both simplistic analysis and solutions constantly fail to address threats to our very existence.

The namesake of a war criminal

has been chopping wood for three days

hefting an orange-handled axe.

Behind him three hunting dogs bark

at the nonchalant passage of a cat.