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Australian Fiction

Memory Reel

Toccata and Rain by Philip Salom

by Paul Hetherington
August 2004, no. 263

Toccata and Rain by Philip Salom

FACP, $24.95pb, 302pp

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

Philip Salom’s poetry has won many awards since his first collection, The Silent Piano, was published in 1980. His poems range widely and have often included fantastical elements, most notably in Sky Poems (1987). The opening of Sky Poems enjoins the reader to ‘Throw out the world’s laws’, promising: ‘Anything you wish, possibly more!’ Such poetry seems to proceed from the assumption that fiction can, after all, be stranger than truth. And, despite its variousness, Salom’s work often returns to certain kinds of strangeness.

 


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Toccata and Rain by Philip Salom

FACP, $24.95pb, 302pp

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


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