Munchian O

Wattison’s poems are always investigative, always humane. They are always willing to take risks. I know of no other Australian poet who writes quite like Meredith Wattison. She choreographs language in a way that is distinctive, deftly filtering moods and complex emotions through her uncanny vision as she aligns a deeply aesthetic mode of perception with the habitual and quotidian. Her language is sculptural and muscular, elegant and biting. Her music is both intense and playful, she can use the seductive registers of her voice to persuade and beguile, move and unsettle, but above all, her work is an enabling moral response to these complex times.

from the Foreword by Judith Beveridge

The Munchian O confirms Meredith Wattison’s status as one of Australia’s most complete poets. Her range seems limitless, and her language is agile as a mongoose. What a treat this collection provides, tracing the portrait of an extraordinary writer over the course of nearly four decades. Everything seems possible in Wattison’s ‘spinning wheel’. - Stuart Cooke

If Self is found in what you wear, what you read, and what you think about it, this book has it all. Gender tyrannies, re-wilding, heritage as power and patriarchal migrant histories: the poet engages the most relevant of contemporary issues in agile poetic debate. The Romantics, the Modernists, iconic Punks and the Middle East, Wattison’s foundation is an ancient ecology and desire (Jung’s rather than Freud’s). Each poem delights in endless voices of ‘I’. This is a book that both hurts, moves, and breathes. - Adam Aitken