Net needle

Robert Adamson has been nourished for much of his life by Australia's Hawkesbury River. His poetry praises nature - red in tooth and claw - and celebrates existence as a mythological quest. Net Needle is his first new collection to be published in Britain since Reading the River: Selected Poems (2004) and The Kingfisher's Soul (2009). Net Needle brings together the presiding influences of Adamson's life, early and late. He casts an affectionate eye on the Hawkesbury fishermen who 'stitched their lives into my days', childhood escapades, lost literary comrades, the light and tides of the river, and the ambiance of his youth. Throughout, he is characteristically attuned to the natural world, sketching encounters both intimate and strange. These are poems of clear-eyed vision and mastery, borne of long experience, alert and at ease.