Now Millenium / Poems from the Madhouse
An award-winning joint volume of poetry, Sandy Jeffs invites the readers into the world of schizophrenia in Poems from the Madhouse, while Deborah Staines presents vivid images that evoke the mythic past and the technological future in Now Millennium. Staines' sequence, Venus Port, explores the destruction of the social fabric set alongside poems of love and loss, images of video worlds as well as words that catch moments on the cusp of millennium. Poems from the Madhouse invites readers into the paradoxical world of insanity: the confusion and clarity, the courage and fear, the bleak despair and the black comedy. You will emerge sadder, wiser, but also exultant in the spirit she shares with us.
1993 | ISBN 9781875559206 | Paperback | 180 x 140 mm | 124
Awards
1994 Commended, Human Rights Award
1993 FAW Anne Elder Award
Reviews
'Of Poems from the Madhouse: ‘This is disturbing but quite wonderful poetry because of its clarity, its humour, its imagery, and the insights it gives us into being human, being mad, being sane. I read and read – and was profoundly moved. I delighted in it as poetry, I was touched by its honesty, courage and vulnerability.’
–Anne Deveson
'Deborah Staines’ respect for and awareness of language’s dynamic possibilities bring inner and outer worlds attentively alive.’
–Fay Zwicky
'Of Now Millennium: ‘This book is really wild … there’s so much passion and commitment and she’s drunk with words.’
–Dorothy Hewett