In a Hint of Rosemary, Hazel Hall is not afraid to push boundaries as she explores the traditional sonnet, its connections with classical Japanese poetic forms, and their shared musicality. She points out similarities between these forms, but also celebrates their differences. This collection includes sonnets with haiku or tanka attached, a sonnet using the same rhyme throughout, a sonnet created with fourteen lines of single-line haiku and a fourteen line ghazal in iambic pentameter. Hazel also experiments with rhyming styles, returning to basic concepts of melody and rhyme in her quest to discover ‘At what point is a sonnet not a sonnet?’ She observes that the sonnet form is barely recognisable in some of her hybrids. Do you agree? Readers are invited to draw their own conclusions. They are also invited to experiment for themselves.
Her previous IP title is Moonrise Over the Siding.
IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd) –
I’ve found it deeply moving. The collection of 56 poems written over 12 years deals with the heartache and fondness we feel for people and times now passed. As well as remembrances, the poems deal with the beauties of nature and humanity that surround us, and the struggles and comforts of everyday life. Hazel seems able to do the reverse, going in a split second from mundane to spiritual, as in the poem Soliloquy, when hearing birdsong and the swishing of grass blown by the wind prompts her to observe ‘Perhaps your music seeks the poet’s goal— to find a way into another soul.
– Tom Gosling, Journalist