Poems In Retrospect: A Selection by the Australasian poet, Stephen Oliver, presents a diverse range of philosophic, contemplative, and metaphysical work published over a span of five decades. Here are poems of heightened imagery, perceptual depth, and assured technical proficiency by ‘a master of his craft.’

‘Stephen Oliver’s book-length historical poem Intercolonial is a journey through cultural identity and landscape, drawing its title from the “trade, shipping and connections between the colonies of Australia and New Zealand”. .... The precision of the lines makes Oliver’s objective brilliantly achieved. .... Oliver’s historical documentation, combined with an impressive imagination, is unique, but his narrative skill as a poet is astounding and this is the most striking feature of the work.’—Robbie Coburn, Plumwood Mountain Journal 

‘Stephen Oliver’s collection [Either Side The Horizon] is the work of a poet confident that his craft will sustain whatever he demands of it in the way of modes: the long-lined discursive or descriptive stanza, the quatrain with a witty twist, the prose poem, the 92 semi-freestanding five-line stanzas that make up “Occupations”, the major piece that closes the collection. Yet this technical proficiency is no peacock display: rather it works in unity with the thematic diversity that is a hallmark of Oliver’s work.’—Jennifer Strauss, Antipodes: A Global Journal of Australian/New Zealand Literature 

‘Stephen Oliver’s Islands of Wilderness—A Romance, is a series of 110 untitled numbered poems, divided into three sections. ... there are fine poems everywhere. ... The third section is more street-wise, funnier, and less—hermetic? The poems are now rooted in specific place—Auckland and Sydney mostly, and various Pacific ports between. There are many excellent poems here—93, 102, 94: “And when Mlle Leprieur blew up / the Rainbow Warrior she got / the gitaway holiday to a / South Pacific Hideaway. / Now she’s home & pregnant, a little live corpse afloat inside her.” The resonance of that emphasised name marks a poet of great nuance.’—Peter Goldsworthy, Australian Book Review

‘In his latest volume, Cranial Bunker, Stephen Oliver ... writes in a voice which is often quietly personal, contemplating age, death, the fate of poets and ancient love affairs. He also writes in the idiom of late modernism, with its ceaseless interrogation of a world that will not speak—and his poems (and prose poems), never merely confessional, are intensely inventive in language and image ... Oliver has developed the prose poem into tightly wrought gems, prose made into poetry ...  This is one of those rare volumes where poem after poem hits the right note, the late work of “a master of his craft.” ’—Nicholas Reid of Canberra, Landfall