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Tide Country

{{Short description|1982 poetry collection by Vivian Smith}}

{{Use Australian English|date=January 2025}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=January 2025}}

{{Infobox book |

| name = Tide Country

| title_orig =

| translator =

| image =

| caption =

| author = Vivian Smith

| cover_artist =

| country = Australia

| language = English

| series =

| genre = Poetry collection

| publisher = Angus and Robertson

| release_date = 1982

| media_type = Print

| pages = 93 pp.

| isbn = 0207144915

| preceded_by =

| followed_by =

| awards = 1982 Grace Leven Prize for Poetry winner

}}

Tide Country is a collection of poems by Australian poet Vivian Smith, published by Angus and Robertson in 1982.{{cite web|title= Tide Country by Vivian Smith |publisher= National Library of Australia|url= https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/230549|access-date= 16 January 2025}}

The collection contains 84 poems taken from a variety of publications such as The Australian newspaper, The Bulletin, Meanjin, Overland, Southerly, and others.{{cite web|title= Tide Country by Vivian Smith |publisher= Austlit|url=https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/C238693|access-date= 16 January 2025}}

Contents

{{div col |colwidth=20em}}

  • "Bedlam Hills"
  • "Bird Sanctuary"
  • "The Shadow"
  • "In Summer Rain"
  • "Summer Band Concert"
  • "Fishermen, Winter"
  • "Thylacine"
  • "Deserted Bandstand, Kingston Beach"
  • "Alceste's Resolution (Alceste (to Gwen Harwood))"
  • "Old Men are Facts : The Ship's Graveyard, Risdon, Tasmania"
  • "Despite the Room"
  • "Water-Beetles"
  • "Winter"
  • "For My Daughter"
  • "Myth"
  • "The Last Summer"
  • "Fishermen, Drowned Beyond the West Coast"
  • "Late Autumn Dove"
  • "The Other Meaning"
  • "Advice (One Season)"
  • "Wrong Turning"
  • "Philoctetes (Philoctetes (In a Private Hotel))"
  • "Family Album"
  • "Quiet Evening"
  • "Deathbed Sketch (for an Unnamed Portrait, Signed)"
  • "Bus Ride"
  • "An Effect of Light"
  • "Dialogue with a Contemporary"
  • "There is No Sleight of Hand"
  • "Early Arrival: Sydney"
  • "Summer Sketches: Sydney"
  • "Return to Hobart"
  • "For a New Year"
  • "Late April: Hobart"
  • "Warmth in July : Hobart"
  • "Crows in Winter"
  • "At an Exhibition of Historical Paintings, Hobart"
  • "Reflections"
  • "Balmoral Summer '66"
  • "View from the Domain, Hobart"
  • "A Room in Mosman"
  • "Postcard from the Subtropics (Postcard from the Sub-Tropics)"
  • "Summer Notes"
  • "Lines for Rosamond McCulloch"
  • "For Edith Holmes: Tasmanian Painter"
  • "A Few Words for Maxi"
  • "For Nan Chauncy : 1900-1970"
  • "Coins and Bricks"
  • "Onion in a Jar"
  • "Three Landscapes : Slope with Boulders"
  • "The Man Fern Near the Bus Stop"
  • "Back in Hobart"
  • "Il Convento, Batignano (for Robert Brain)"
  • "Twenty Years of Sydney"
  • "The Traveller Returns"
  • "My Morning Dip"
  • "The Edge of Winter"
  • "Still Life"
  • "Three Landscapes : The Restorers"
  • "Revisiting"
  • "The Tower : Muzot"
  • "Late May : Sydney"
  • "Looking Back"
  • "Dung Beetles"
  • "Tasmania"
  • "Autumn Reading"
  • "Convolvulus"
  • "At the Parrot House, Taronga Park"
  • "From Korea"
  • "Delie, Obiect de Plvs Havlte Vertu (1544) (after Maurice Sceve)"
  • "Variations on Garnier's Perpetuum Mobile"
  • "Summer Feeling (after Britting)"
  • "Under the Pine (after Peter Huchel)"
  • "House for Sale (after Andre Frenaud)"
  • "Corona (Poems After Paul Celan : Corona)"
  • "Poems After Paul Celan : Flower"
  • "Poems After Paul Celan : In Praise of Distance"
  • "Poems After Paul Celan : Menhir"
  • "Poems After Paul Celan : With Changing Key"
  • "Poems After Paul Celan : Ich Bin Allein"
  • "Poems After Paul Celan : The Whitest Dove of All"
  • "Poems After Paul Celan : Sleep Then"
  • "Poems After Paul Celan : Sleep and Food"
  • "Poems After Paul Celan : I Heard it Said"

{{div col end}}

Critical reception

Writing in The Age reviewer Kerryn Goldsworthy found in a lot of the poems Smith stuck to a certain forms which "sometimes lets him down, either through ostentatious overcarefulness at the expense of fluency, or through the tendency to cliche".{{cite web|title="Poems of place" |publisher= The Age, 23 July 1983, p150|url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/2521253730|access-date= 16 January 2025|id= {{ProQuest|2521253730}}}}

In Australian Book Review Barbara Giles found that Smith writes "elegant, lyrical verse, carefully wrought and varied in content, in masterly fashion."{{cite web|title="Barbara Giles reviews 'The Most Beautiful World' by Rodney Hall, 'Tide Country' by Vivian Smith, 'Heaven of Rags' by Gary Catalano, and 'Song of the Humpbacked Whales' by Jill Hellyer" |publisher= Australian Book Review, December 1982-January 1983|url=https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/abr-online/archive/1982/623-december-1982-january-1983-no-47/7453-barbara-giles-reviews-the-most-beautiful-world-by-rodney-hall-tide-country-by-vivian-smith-heaven-of-rags-by-gary-catalano-and-song-of-the-humpbacked-whales-by-jill-hellyer|access-date= 16 January 2025}}

Notes

  • Dedication: For Sybille, Vanessa, Gabrielle and Nicholas

Awards

  • 1982 Grace Leven Prize for Poetry, winner{{cite web|title= Austlit – Tide Country by Vivian Smith – Awards |publisher= Austlit|url=https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/C238693?mainTabTemplate=workAwards|access-date= 16 January 2025}}
  • 1983 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, winner{{cite web|title= Peter Kocan book wins a Wran prize|publisher= Sydney Morning Herald, 6 September 1983, p8|url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/2526815224|access-date= 3 May 2024|id= {{ProQuest|2526815224}}}}

See also

References

{{Reflist}}

{{Grace Leven Prize for Poetry}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tide Country}}

Category:Australian poetry collections