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I am so thrilled with my new collection from Pitt Street Poetry, The Alpaca Cantos. Alison Goodman called the beautiful teal package "absolutely gorgeous". She also says
Jenny Blackford's poetry creates a unique commentary on life, sometimes sweet, sometimes dark, but always with a delicate touch full of insight and emotion.
Esteemed poet Judy Johnson would have launched the collection on 4 April but for social distancing. But her launch speech is online, beautifully presented at the Rochford Street Review, along with two of the poems that Judy mentions: "Black ice night, frogmouth" and "Going home". Judy writes,
The recurring theme of animals in the titles both is and isn’t misleading. There are indeed many creatures who dot the pages of this new book as well as previous collections, but there are also fine human studies of love, grief, joy and hardship. More often than not humans and animals come together in poems that are insightfully larger than the sum of their parts. Often in these works an animal appears as either a catalyst for deeper thought or as a subtle spirit guide...
Beyond her facility with craft, what attracts me particularly is that rarer quality: the generosity of her vision combined with an ability to stand aside rather than taking centre stage, despite the often confessional first person narration. In this way the words wrap themselves around the reader, delivered with the quietly coaxing voice of a natural born storyteller.
As part of the virtual launch, feel free to see me read the first poem in the collection, "Black ice night, frogmouth" - or going back to my Classicist roots with one of the best love poems of all time, Catullus 51 (with my own fairly literal translation) -- both as part of the Pitt Street Poetry LEGERE poetry video project.
I'm thrilled at another esteemed poet's reaction to the book. Mary Soon Lee writes:
This is a small, beautiful book of poetry by Jenny Blackford, one of my favorite contemporary poets. The poems are mostly mainstream, but include those that stray into science fiction and fantasy. The wording is precise, articulate, with clear beautiful phrases. The poems are by turns striking, humorous, gentle, moving. I particularly liked the many references to nature, especially the nods to llamas, alpacas, and guanacos. (I have a very soft spot for guanacos.) I loved the compassion with which individuals, human or otherwise, are evoked.
Read more here, if you like.
Yet another esteemed poet, Magdalena Ball, has reviewed THE ALPACA CANTOS for The Compulsive Reader:
Yet another esteemed poet, Magdalena Ball, has reviewed THE ALPACA CANTOS for The Compulsive Reader:
Even at its most intense, Blackford’s poetry never stops being warm, accessible and humorous. The Alpaca Cantos is beautifully presented with thick paper, careful layouts, with lovely drawings by artist Gwynneth Jones. These are poems that are both complex and simple, tragic and yet infused with delight and an almost impish joy in the day-to-day.
And another fabulous poet, Emma Lee, reviews it on The Blue Nib:
‘The Alpaca Cantos’ is a collection of poems that show a reverence of nature, a strong concern that humans are destroying valuable ecosystems and hasting destructive forces. There’s a secondary theme of how human desire for respectability and keeping reputations intact is a cause of shame and darker consequences. Jenny Blackford writes with delicacy, a gentle humour and compassion.