Peter Bland: Let’s Meet: Poems 1985-2000

Reviewed by PENELOPE BIEDER

Let's Meet is a wonderful collection of poems written between 1985 (the year he starred in the film Came a Hot Friday) and 2000.

A largish volume reveals a man intent on getting out into the ordinary, everyday world where he can walk and watch wanderers from the old men's home "as they steal feijoas from the jewelled villas/of downtown lawyers on fenced estates".

On his walks wherever he finds himself, Herne Bay, Putney, Menton, Barcelona, one imagines Bland going out, minding his own business but carefully "giving himself up to the pleasures of the day/as they offer themselves in intimate abundance".

His gift is an acute ability to convey a sort of mental spaciousness, repose and delight as he draws a vivid picture of what he finds around him.

There is always, though, an under-lying politically astute subtext, that notes the ageing fascistas taking their coffee in Spain or empathises with the plight of refugees: "For the rest of your life/there'll be two sets of voices — /those in the street /and those in your head" he cautions in Advice to Immigrants.

Publisher: Steele Roberts

Price $24.95