Birds and Fish

The final collection from the award-winning 'poet of the Hawkesbury River'


In the old days I used to think art

That was purely imagined could fly higher

Than anything real. Now I feel a small fluttering

Bird in my own pulse, a connection to the sky.

--from 'The Kingfisher's Soul'

In the last year of his life, with the help of friend and poet Devin Johnston, Robert Adamson put together a selection of his writings on the natural world. Birds and Fish defines the presences in his life on the Hawkesbury River and includes excerpts from his autobiography, Inside Out, as well as essays written over the years for Fishing World; some prose poems; and journal excerpts related to his bowerbird Spinoza. Adamson's prose is vivid, precise, and draws on his life on the river and his poetic sensibility. The final book will include selected black and white photographs by Adamson's partner Juno Gemes.

'[Adamson] is as deft and resourceful a craftsman as exists, and his poems move with a clarity and ease I find unique.' --Robert Creeley

'Robert Adamson is one of Australia's national treasures.' --John Ashbery