Canberra Poems

Originating in Canberra, Andrew Purches's collection Canberra Poems provide a response that relies on a place that thrives on dichotomies: space versus concentration; nature versus urbanity; sharp contrasts within seasons; all things that could only belong to a city originally founded on compromise. It also includes the sequence of poems The Burnt Land, dealing with the identities that a nation of colonisers find themselves forced to create in the face of a land that continually shows them their own sense of exile.