passages

by Jenni Nixon

'Jenni Nixon's passages is a family history, memoir and social commentary unlike any other, fashioned with a poetic voice distinctly her own. At turns harsh and tender, suffused with biting humour, yet never facile, Nixon's are "words that form rivers" coursing through Australia's colonial settlement down to present-day Sydney, our steamy twenty-first century megapolis with its jerrybuilt concrete towers and frangipani blossoms. Out of its meandering streets and alleyways, from ship-borne convicts and settlers, Indigenous warriors to Centrelink dependents, the frenzied young to wasted old, Nixon creates the dank lonely world of its hassled poor in the shadows of lost time. This is the power of poetry at its finest, a language freed from the caged syntax of mere prose. One can only marvel at the sweep of her imagination, her steadfast allegiance to the downtrodden, whether out in the wider world or watching from an inner-city balcony, at every stage of the passage.' - Sara Dowse