Without an Alibi: (Salt Modern Poets)

This book is divided into two sections: the first is titled “Forest” and deals with environmental issues through a wide range of approaches and forms, including lyrical celebration, satirical and comic attacks upon folly, and explores both contemporary and historical subjects. The second section is titled “Metamorphosis” and deals with relationships, politics and myths. Neilsen is interested in everything – the science of botany, the subterfuges within marriage, the beauty of birds, the evolution of clock-making, bears who attack American campers, New Age exploitation of the vulnerable, workplace bullying, World War Two, the German love of Roy Orbison, Blues music, academic politics, creative writing classes, mortality, and the ancient magic of the forest. He explores or reinvents historical and literary figures such as Oliver Cromwell, Shakespeare, Joseph Banks, George Bush, Robinson Crusoe, Kenneth Graham and Lewis Carrol, Christian saints who battled the pagans, Brunhild and Sigurd, Jim Corbett and his tigers, Harry Potter in restless middle age. Neilsen uses a wide range of poetic styles, from the formal to free verse, providing the reader with a variety of voices and perspectives – but all his poetry is driven by intelligence, seriousness, curiosity, inventiveness, a comic imagination, passion and wit. He finds no easy answers, celebrating both nature and science, reason and fantasy, but always wary of hypocrisy, humbug and hubris. No wonder his work has been praised by poets as varied as Les Murray and John Kinsella.

Table of Contents:
Part I – The Forest Narrative of a Leaf Literary Forests 1. The Last of the Mohicans 2. The Children of the New Forest 3. Robinson Crusoe 4. The Wind in the Willows The Black Forest The Conservative Forest The Fairy-Tale Forest The Imperial Forest St Martin and St Boniface Destroy the Forest Gods Sigurd is Instructed by the Birds Brunhild Becomes a Nature Goddess Brisbane, 1959-1960 27 Clouds Crusoe Revisited Death will be Unsighted Statues Northern Hairy-Nosed Wombat Gangway In Praise of Bears Jim Corbett Has the Idea for a National Park Koreelah Ranges, Northern NSW Ecological Love Poem May Gibbs in the New Suburbs Plantation – Glasshouse Mountains Anatomy of a Forest Public Liability Recording the Birds Salt The Art of Memory The Lost Valley The Man Who Couldn’t See Colours The Need for Seclusion Fontainbleau Forest Queensland Bedtime Story Tree-planting Under the Cover of Shared Pleasures Wilderness Carbon Dioxide Bush Lullaby 2 Part II – Metamorphosis The Anteater Walking with Shoulder Bags Suburban Dinner (1) The Investigation (2) Taking Off from Cyprus Tavistock Square July 7, 2005 Metamorphosis First Creative Writing Class Do We Have to Read the Set Books? Six Curses After I Died Poetry at Hanging Rock The Lie of Biology The Romance of the Clockmakers Workplace Bullying Biggles Flies Again at 95 Harry Potter and the Enchanted Wood Blaming Your Childhood Roy Orbison in Germany Academic Party In Search of Shakespeare Practising Blues Piano Scales Lewis Carroll’s Counsellor George Bush in Brisbane Pets

About the Author :
Philip Neilsen is an acclaimed poet, fiction writer and editor. He has published five collections of poetry, five novellas or novels for young adults or children, a book of literary criticism on David Malouf, and edited two major collections of Australian satirical poetry. He is the founding head of creative writing and cultural studies at the Queensland University of Technology.

Review :
Philip Neilsen is a master of transformations ... his work may portend a return, or continuation of the Australian sense of poetry as an art for people beyond one's own narrow cohort. -- Les A Murray Philip Neilsen [is] an important Australian writer ... as a fantasist he is capable of a literary distancing [similar to] Borges ... a powerful talent. Southerly Philip Neilsen is a writer of national reputation, whose name will soar outside Australia over the coming years. When he writes a poem, he does something quite unique: he manages to balance the "machine" of the line, the use of figurative language, and unusually for many poets, knowledge. -- John Kinsella Neilsen's poems appeal particularly; they're adventurous [and] have great emotional strength. Sydney Morning Herald