Description
Rod Usher’s third collection, Convent Mermaid, is full of wit and sadness, love and loss.
Many of the poems spring from his long experience as a journalist, novelist and from years of living and working in Europe.
As Les Murray has written, Rod´s poetry inspires both tears and laughter. He’s equally at home in poetic conversation with Emily Dickinson, David Bowie and Federico Garcia Lorca, in revisiting Cro-Magnon Man, or portraying the to-and-fro of love and sex.
His poems find their feet in Australia, Spain, England and the U.S., their rhyme typically embedded rather than obligatory, though he bows to the tight rules of haiku.
IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd) –
Rod Usher reminds us why we care about poetry–why it remains relevant and vital–in his third poetry collection, Convent Mermaid. A multi-talented writer with an impressive background in international journalism and several published novels to his credit, Usher’s poetic work is imbued with candor, wit, depth, and tenderness. He engaged this reader with his considerable powers of observation, surprised with rhyme schemes, and inspired with his appreciation of the stuff of life we so often take for granted. Through the beauty of language and the lens of experience, the poet communicates the wonder of it all from the perspective of a citizen of the world who remains accessible. Poem after poem, I found myself thinking, ‘Yes–that’s how it is.’ Beyond reaching the heart, mind, and funny bone, Convent Mermaid illustrates the potential of poetry to not only enrich but to transform.
– American writer Barbara Taylor
IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd) –
Rod Usher has authored two previous poetry collections, three novels, and three non-fiction titles. His second novel, Florid States, was short-listed for the MIND Book of the Year Award in the UK, and his work appears regularly in leading literary magazines and anthologies. He has worked as a journalist, is a former literary editor of The Age, former chief-sub-editor of The Sunday Times, London, and a former senior writer for TIME magazine in Europe.
No surprise then that his third poetry collection, Convent Mermaid (Interactive Press, The Literature Series) is filled with imagery and wit, loss and sadness, themes universal to us all.
“First Hotel,” opens the collection, taking us on a wild ride from our ‘First Hotel,’ to arrival in the world. “If I Go First,” is the last poem, about dying and what we might hope for those we leave behind.
Many of Usher’s poems begin in a humorous vein and end on a serious note. One example is, “If Not More.” Here, a Cro-Magnon man enjoys the simple comforts of his cave while thinking of retiring from long days of hunting, though his wife is against the idea because she doesn’t want him ‘getting in her way’ all day. His children want to ‘move up a rung,’ and modernize the cave. The reader sympathizes while smiling – his predicament isn’t so different from twenty-first century concerns – until the final lines, when this husband and father ruminates on the meaning of beauty and we realize there are more important things in life than, ‘moving up a rung.’
One of my favorites is the deceptively simple, “Hard Rain,” an understated lament of loneliness and sadness over the loss of a pet:
tongue-lashes the bedroom window
water talking its way in
through the unsnug frame,
pooling on the tile floor.
I ought to get up, I say,
do some caulking with the red towel
that dried the dog before…
As in all good poetry, Usher’s poems contain more than meets the eye. His sly humor shines often, as in the title poem, “Convent Mermaid.” A modest, convent-bred girl sheds her clothes to swim in the nude. She is far enough from shore that a voyeur cannot see anything of note, but then he calls out with a request to take a photograph. At such a distance, she thinks, what could it matter?
Guesstimating distance to darkness of pine,
She treads the wrapping water, shrugs.
Once more she is supine.
He clicks before shyness can its shell resume,
Before Convent Mermaid has time to remember
Our camera has zoom.
– Judith Quaempts, The Internet Review of Books
IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd) –
Also written about the writer:
Gentle, wry, intelligent…a highly civilised performance. I laughed out loud at times, I inwardly cried at other times.
– Les Murray on the poetry collection Smiling Treason.
IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd) –
The poems are well travelled and modulate from blatant indulgence to the blissed, beat mysticism of driving home to Toft Monks, in Norfolk:
Centuries of rooted oak and elm
threaten these seconds
stoic wood secretly magnetic
as I burn present into past
far too fast:
The dashboard glows like pity.
– S.K. Kelen on Smiling Treason, Canberra Times.
IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd) –
Don´t anticipate post-modernist tricks or mirages. But you may well find poems of quiet enjoyment, and a singing voice that moves with a practised but not entirely predictable cadence.
– Thomas Shapcott on Smiling Treason in Bookseller and Publisher
IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd) –
Rod Usher´s first novel has an important integrity. Well-crafted, sensitive and speaking of things that matter it is a civilising work of literary art.
– Rod Moran on A Man of Marbles, Overland.
IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd) –
If you´re frozen-hearted, Florid States will thaw you out. Usher makes you care what happens to everybody – even the bigots – and everything in his little community.
– Mary Rose Liverani, The Australian.
IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd) –
What a Terrific novel!
– Sydney Morning Herald on Florid States.
IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd) –
Usher takes risks both with language and with his subject matter. He is an important writer who both moves and challenges the reader.
– John Hanrahan, The Age.
IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd) –
It is a clever writer who can balance a love story, a fable and a serious comment on modern life. Rod Usher does it admirably in his latest novel, Poor Man´s Wealth.
— Mary Philip, Courier-Mail.
IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd) –
Usher evokes his character slowly with internalisations and one becomes fond of his foibles and his good but wary heart. ..all very gentle, softly comic and entirely charming.
– Samela Harris on Poor Man´s Wealth, Adelaide Advertiser.