Salt and Petals

In his first collection of verse, poet James Milenkovic offers a fresh vision of the Australian landscape and its people, both ancient and modern. Under his pen, the land assumes a dreamy, ambiguous and almost enigmatic quality that sometimes thwarts and sometimes amazes its human inhabitants. Readers will take much pleasure in the situations and vignettes depicted in Milenkovic’s poems. They give rise to a splendid yet subdued display of thoughts and emotions. Themes of frustration and impotency, hope and joy resound throughout this anthology, alongside an exploration of the pleasures and intricacies of relationships and a gentle contemplation of death and other unknowable outcomes. Using recurring images of water and sun, light and shadow, together with his idiosyncratic use and placement of words and phrases, Milenkovic juxtaposes the concrete with the abstract to present a fresh perspective on a range of dilemmas and situations that are common to our human existence.