For All We Are
'For All We Are' is a collection of 35 award winning poems.
The following is a quote from a 'review' written by Ron Stevens, a highly celebrated and successful poet and a Writing Fellow of the NSW Fellowship of Australian Writers.
"Brian's subjects range from local (Oberon) to national (Chardonnay Campaign) to the international (Kosovo Last Night). He can express humour (Driving Miss Crazy), pathos, (Sarah's Place) or anger, (Aussie). Yes anger! He might appear to be peaceful and unthreatening, but offend against his sense of right, his earnest patriotism, his belief in mateship, a fair go and his respect for the past, you risk being a target of his anger. But it's a controlled anger. His favourite weapons are wit, satire and understated contempt, reinforced by a battery of literary allusions and the arsenal of Australian history. His poem My Country illustrates the range and power of his literary counter-attack."
The following is a quote from a 'review' written by Ron Stevens, a highly celebrated and successful poet and a Writing Fellow of the NSW Fellowship of Australian Writers.
"Brian's subjects range from local (Oberon) to national (Chardonnay Campaign) to the international (Kosovo Last Night). He can express humour (Driving Miss Crazy), pathos, (Sarah's Place) or anger, (Aussie). Yes anger! He might appear to be peaceful and unthreatening, but offend against his sense of right, his earnest patriotism, his belief in mateship, a fair go and his respect for the past, you risk being a target of his anger. But it's a controlled anger. His favourite weapons are wit, satire and understated contempt, reinforced by a battery of literary allusions and the arsenal of Australian history. His poem My Country illustrates the range and power of his literary counter-attack."
'Voices from the Castlereagh'
A section at the end of the book - 'Voices from the Castlereagh' - contains nine poems written about Gilgandra and the relative history of the Coo-ee March.
One of these poems, 'Conscripted Coo-ee', deals with the possible 'acceptance' into the Coo-ee brotherhood of Michael J. Noonan, a Gilgandra local. Michael was conscripted in 1967 but was killed in action in Vietnam in September, 1968.
His loss caused a great deal of distress throughout the district, where the Coo-ees had assembled just over fifty years earlier. A memorial at Gilgandra, contained within a small rose garden, is dedicated to his memory.
263 Coo-ees, full of excitement and adventure, left for France in 1916 - many never returned
One of these poems, 'Conscripted Coo-ee', deals with the possible 'acceptance' into the Coo-ee brotherhood of Michael J. Noonan, a Gilgandra local. Michael was conscripted in 1967 but was killed in action in Vietnam in September, 1968.
His loss caused a great deal of distress throughout the district, where the Coo-ees had assembled just over fifty years earlier. A memorial at Gilgandra, contained within a small rose garden, is dedicated to his memory.
263 Coo-ees, full of excitement and adventure, left for France in 1916 - many never returned
