The Jaguar
Sarah Holland-Batt
With electrifying boldness, Sarah Holland-Batt confronts what it means to be mortal in an astonishing and deeply humane portrait of a father’s Parkinson’s Disease, and a daughter forged by grief.
Opening and closing with startling elegies set in the charged moments before and after a death, and fearlessly probing the body’s animal endurance, appetites and metamorphoses, The Jaguar is marked by Holland-Batt’s lyric intensity and linguistic mastery, along with a stark new clarity of voice.
Here, Holland-Batt is at her most exacting and uncompromising: these ferociously intelligent, insistent poems refuse to look away, and challenge us to view ruthless witness as a form of love. The Jaguar is an indelible collection by a poet at the height of her powers.
‘Intensely moving ... Few poets can achieve this level of transformation ... Holland-Batt has produced a powerful and sustained work, a book that I will keep returning to for its rich haul of images, its intensity of emotion, the pleasure of its finely wrought music and its elegant craft.’
‘A personal memoir, narrating the devastating illness and death of her father ... charged throughout with a strong writer’s intelligence and vulnerability. Words are worked at, rubbed and turned and used for digging into the truth with unsentimental feeling.’
‘A key figure in contemporary Australian poetry.’
- Release
- May-2022
- ISBN
- 9780702265501
- RRP (AUD)
- $24.99
- Pages
- 144
- Format
- Paperback
- Category
- Poetry
Sarah Holland-Batt
Sarah Holland-Batt is an award-winning poet, editor and critic. Her books have been the recipients of a number of literary awards including the Stella Prize, Queensland Premier’s Award for a Work of State Significance and the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry.
University of Queensland Press (UQP)
For 70 years UQP has been at the forefront of innovative publishing. It has launched the careers of many great novelists, published contemporary poets, been a pioneering force in children’s and young adult publishing and has set the benchmark for award-winning scholarly and Black Australian writing.
