ALL THE ROOM book cover   All the Room
David Rowbotham
1964

Dustjacket synopsis:
"With this new (third) collection of verses, David Rowbotham stands out as a serious commentator on man and the human condition: a role shown even by his poems of love.

"This development was predicted as early as 1954, with his first volume, Ploughman and Poet. That book's poems of man and nature, its personal lyrics, and its sense of history, pointed to the progression in theme and technique that was to be made manifest in the second volume, Inland, in 1958.

"In All the Room, characteristics of the other books that established David Rowbotham as a poet of the country-side are still evident. He has never lost touch with his origins. But the change of emphasis in his work is now paramount.

"It can be said that, as a result of his greater involvement with the lot of man, with issues of modern civilization, David Rowbotham has moved out of the sunlight of his earlier work into the shadows.

"But the sunlight is not forgotten.

"Beside the stark picture of 'The Continent', for example, and the crisis of 'A Twentieth Century Man', there are the resolution of 'Seven Lustres', and the philosophic optimism of 'Waterfall at Franz Josef Glacier, New Zealand', which has been translated and anthologized in Russia.

"David Rowbotham remains one of the most interesting and individual of contemporary Australian poets."

About the Author:
David Rowbotham was born in Toowoomba, Queensland in 1924. From 1969-79 he was literary and theatre critic for the Brisbane Courier-Mail, and its literary editor from 1980-87. He was made AM, and, in 1988, emeritus fellow of Australian Literature by the Australia Council.

Contents:

"Shake Hands"
"The Continent"
"Forest Night"
"Affinity"
"The Tide"
"There Was Moonlight Shining"
"The Winds"
"Waterfall at Franz Josef Glacier, New Zealand"
"The Mountain"
"The Victory"
"Roofs"
"A Place"
"Summer-night Circus"
"Love and Rain"
"Straw"
"A Twentieth-centry Man"
"So Dream"
"Footfalls"
"Call the Beauty"
"The Flames Go Leaping Still..."
"Landscape"
"The Water..."
"The Tunnel"
"Poet to Painter"
"Memorial"
"Sparrows"
"The Soldier"
"The Meeting"
"Seven Lustres"
"The Boy"
"Shadows"
"Homeward"
"Handle with Care"
"Summer on the Farmlands"
"Bay-tree"
"Your Eyes Were Measured..."
"Where Autumn Stood"
"Three Horses"
"Green Stones"
"The Tree"
"The Concertina"
"The Palm"
"The Stone"
"Something Always..."
"Forever"
"Three Sketches"
     "Christine"
     "Ben Bonney, Stoker"
     "Lunch-time in Harvest"
"The Country Man"

From the Jacaranda Press hardback edition, 1964.

This page and its contents are copyright © 2001 by Perry Middlemiss, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

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Last modified: April 18, 2001.