RRP: AUD $15.00 + p&p.
A Good Harvest
New and selected poems
By
Maureen Freer.
ISBN: 978-1921214-45-5
A5 51pp
AUD $15.00 + p&p.
About
Maureen Freer was raised on her parents’ farm, Millmerran district, but has lived and worked in Brisbane since the 1950s.
Whilst her career has been mainly "family business" (six children, snack food manufacturing eg Red Seal Chips and Superfoods), she has written/edited a number of books including a Commonwealth Anthology, a local history, had a stage play performed in Brisbane Arts Theatre (Jean Trundle Prize) and won several poetry awards including the Premier's Poetry Prize 1987.
She was Chair/Convenor of the Brisbane Writers Festival, from the early Warana days, for fourteen years, and also chaired the 1982 Commonwealth Writers Week. She received the Order of Australia for services to Australian literature in 1984.
Her poetry has been published in leading newspapers and journals and on the ABC.
A Good Harvest is her third collection of verse.
Proudly published by Post Pressed
Reviews
The range of interests in Maureen Freer's selected poems, A Good Harvest, is enviably wide, as is the range of forms in which the poems move, including many excellent haiku. As well as poems revealing a great depth of understanding of the natural world and its creatures, we are also presented with many moving insights into personal family life and the love that animates it at its best.
Our social world is also portrayed with its Cloudlands, Shoppingtown singers, Melbourne Cup, and Easter rituals. 'We sow our words on the wind', says Maureen Freer, but her words in this collection will surely invigorate all who read them. She is one of our most immediately accessible poets, and one who has established a firm reputation over many years.
Bruce Dawe
Extract
A GOOD HARVEST
"Should be a good harvest," he said.
(One cow bogged in the gully-dam
and one on the creek bank, dead).
"When we clear that Brigalow patch
and put The Ringing to plough
that's two more paddocks for wheat
ready next season, but now
(glancing at clouds overhead)
we must keep an eye on the weather."But I kept an eye on the cow
and the ripe wheat, wondering whether
to pray the clouds yield no rain
till harvest or would it be better
to nourish the cattle? Again
he spoke, hauling rope from the ute
to rescue his milker. "It's funny
how you sometimes need rain when you don't.
Some say it will be a good harvest.
But then, others say that it won't."