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Absolutely Revolting
Poetry

Less pay, better work

Transit by Mike Ladd

by Adrian Caesar •
December 2007–January 2008, no. 297

Transit by Mike Ladd

Five Islands Press, $21.95 pb, 64 pp (with CD)

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ABR receives a commission on items purchased through this link. All ABR reviews are fully independent.

In his poem ‘Reunion’, Mike Ladd takes us back to his old school in Adelaide. Three stanzas recapitulate the journey before another four talk us through the fate of the poet’s former schoolmates. Some of these outcomes are predictably neat: ‘How the wild girl became a matron, / and the prim one, a single mum, at seventeen.’ The ‘cop’s son’ ‘was shot dead in Afghanistan, / a mercenary, picked off by sniper fire’, while ‘the thin and gormless one / made a fortune dealing stocks’. All this and more is prelude to the finale:

 


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Transit by Mike Ladd

Five Islands Press, $21.95 pb, 64 pp (with CD)

Buy this book

ABR receives a commission on items purchased through this link. All ABR reviews are fully independent.

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