Author Description

This retrospective by Jan Owen includes a majority of the poems from her first five volumes, with some revisions. Gathered with them is a book-length collection of new poetry, Laughing in Greek. A large and intricate world is on display, present in capsule on page 1 in 'First Love'. This poem sets going a motif of the airy light and shadow cast by memory of adult and childhood relationships. It also raises the lure of knowledge: Owen's verse is infused with the sciences, and with art, philosophy and history. Her interest is the world itself, and the words for it. When she writes a poem that dwells on a place or a painting - or a memory - it is not as a tourist impressionist but as a thinker and precise sensualist. Jan Owen has a command of wit and tone across a wide range of verse techniques, both formal and free. She moves easily between plain, oblique and surreal. Some of the new poems seem glowing labyrinths of thinking and language - led through by a wonderful clarity of voice and rhythm. Poems 1980-2008 was shortlisted and 'highly commended' for the 2009 Judith Wright Prize in the A.C.T Awards.