// Workers AI · dad joke modeWhat did the viewfinder say? "I've got a new perspective.

The Viewfinder

Author	Anthony Lawrence
Language	English
Genre	Poetry collection
Publisher	University of Queensland Press
Publication date	1996
Publication place	Australia
Media type	Print
Pages	100 pp.
Awards	1997 NSW Premier's Prize for Poetry, winner
ISBN	0702228818

The Viewfinder is a collection of poems by Australian poet Anthony Lawrence, published by University of Queensland Press in 1996.

The collection contains 75 poems from a variety of sources, with some published here for the first time.

The collection won the 1997 NSW Premier's Prize for Poetry.

Contents

• "Retirement"
• "Insects"
• "Another Thing"
• "Greetings"
• "Primary Industry"
• "Rats"
• "A Field in Tennessee"
• "Reincarnation"
• "Alchemy"
• "1773"
• "A Dublin Market"
• "The Skate"
• "Coma"
• "Sherwood Forest, 1925"
• "Spanish Point"
• "The Driver"
• "Aubade with Dying River"
• "Gathering Seed"
• "The Name, the Bird"
• "The Line"
• "The Dark Ship (for Marijke)"
• "Oberon"
• "Bullfights and Hemingway - a Modified History"
• "Laura Riding"
• "Raymond"
• "Self Loathing"
• "Grief"
• "Failed Libido"
• "Depression"
• "Anxiety"
• "Lethargy"
• "Remedies That Don't Work"
• "Lone Pine Road"
• "The Beauty Forge (for Tracy Ryan)"
• "Involuntary Actions and Thought Control"
• "Tinnitus"
• "Slipjigs and Reels : Psychiatric Hospital, Cork, Ireland, 1981"
• "Slipjigs and Reels : Allihies/Innishmoor : Allihies"
• "Slipjigs and Reels : Allihies/Innishmoor : Innishmoor"
• "Slipjigs and Reels : Skibbereen"
• "Slipjigs and Reels : In a Bar Overlooking the Harbour"
• "What the Crayfisherman Said"
• "Dead Men's Fingers"
• "Tattoo"
• "Bird Park"
• "Wetlands"
• "Wildflowers, Tallering Station"
• "Globe"
• "Whatever Passes Through"
• "Blackheath Cemetery"
• "Dusk Light and Approaching Snow, Porter's Pass"
• "Watching Gipsies Work"
• "The Protestant Cemetery, Rome"
• "The Downhill"
• "The Rat's Tail and the Knives"
• "The Fire-Danger Bird"
• "Gold"
• "Cricket : Bouncer"
• "Cricket : Bodyline"
• "Cricket : Television"
• "Cricket : Radio"
• "Cricket : Those Feral Australians : 1"
• "Cricket : Those Feral Australians : 2"
• "Cricket : Umpire Crafter Says No"
• "Ezra Pound"
• "Dugite Skeletons"
• "Datura"
• "Airsong"
• "Reading the Runes (for Roshan Groves)"
• "The Chess Heads"
• "John Berryman in Dublin"
• "Italian Television"
• "Scars"
• "The Task"
• "Testaccio"

Critical reception

On the volume's shortlisting for the 1996 The Age Book of the Year Award – Poetry Award the judges called the poems "meticulous in their lyrical detail." They continued: "This poetry believes both in the virtue of recording – the tiniest movements of the human body, what lies beneath the carapace of blue swiming crabs, the intricacies of Italian television – and in seeing beyond the form."

In a review of the volume for Quadrant magazine, Alison Croggin noted that it "has the showiness of a small-time gangster." She concluded: "Lawrence creates a superficial disturbance, a sense of something nasty in the woodshed, often allied with a kind of associative sentiment (as in 'John Berryman in Dublin'). But he never opens the door."

Awards

• 1996 The Age Book of the Year Award – Poetry, shortlisted
• 1997 NSW Premier's Prize for Poetry

Notes

• Dedication: For Anita Hoving

See also

• 1996 in Australian literature