Pentimento

If you are the only one capable of saving the world, would a hedgehog be your go-to solution? Should you commit seppuku simply because you feel at home everywhere? How much trouble could you be in, if you imagine that most people you meet are your concubines? What if you find out that God occasionally indulges in writing dirty poems? These questions seem absurd. However, before passing judgment, you might discover the surprising poetic resolutions that Daniel Ionita proposes in this volume.


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With poems often inventive and always gripping our attention, Daniel Ionita’s Pentimento is a much-travelled collection that ranges over geographies, poets, dictators, titillations, violence, bitterness, love… musings on the eternal… and unexpected detours such as a plot to kill Santa.

– Paul Scully, author, The Fickle Pendulum

Ionita has succeeded – with dexterous flair – in meshing history with the biblical while ribbing authority and human excess through absurdity and surrealism – reminding the reader of Tristan Tzara and the Dadaists… This collection is a significant contribution to Australian poetry.

– James Gering, author, Staying Whole by Falling Apart

[Ionita’s poems] are often enigmatic and paradoxical. But they also have a forthright energy and openness, a flair for drama and a desire to connect as well as to entertain… The imagery may be appealingly whimsical, but this is not simple…instantly clear… poetry. A flexible way of reading is required – preferably with a sense of humour and a willingness to respond intuitively to both the charm and the inherent contrariness…

– Jean Kent, on Daniel Ionita’s Short Bursts of Eternity