Flying Kites: Friendly Street Poets 36 edited by Judy Dally and Louise McKenna

Wakefield Press, 2012. ISBN 9781743051009.
Having just finished this collection of poems I have become acutely aware of one thing; I should read more poetry. Our 'modern' lifestyle seems to mean that we have far too many competing demands and far too little time. My reading time is divided roughly into three equal parts; Adult Fiction, Young Adult Fiction and Adult Non-Fiction. Where is the time for poetry you ask? I do read the odd collection of a trusted favourite but nowhere near enough.
This 36th anthology from the Friendly Street Collective reminds me why people write poetry and why we should read it. I can't pretend to have loved every poem in the collection but the standard was uniformly good and there were some seriously fine poems that I re-read more than once. The beauty of any anthology is that you have lots of styles and subject matter to choose from and here is no exception. Standout poems for me were John Pfitzner's Pointless, Sharon Kernot's Dear Publisher, and both efforts from Mike Hopkins, The Adelaide Taxi Driver's Prayer and my personal favourite, Last of the Cat Poems.
Stephen Bull