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Winner, 2014 IP Rolling Picks Best Poetry
B N Oakman finds poetry in the ordinary, the exotic, the political and the aesthetic. No head of State or classical film is safe from his exacting eye, which yields refreshing insights about subjects we thought we already understood.
A poet for the journey rather than the arrival, Oakman blends intellect, heart and imagination in sharply observed verse employing the rhythms of everyday speech with a conversational tone devoid of sentimentality. He eschews distracting detail, embellishment and pointless abstractions, to usher his readers towards closing lines frequently of startling impact. If this book has a leitmotif it might be distilled from the poetry of Antonio Machado, the great Spanish poet whose life and work are referenced here and there throughout Second Thoughts. Oakman is plainly sympathetic to Machado's credo: Wayfarer, your footsteps/ are the road and nothing more./ Wayfarer, there is no road,/ the road is made by walking. Oakman's writing, recently described by a prominent critic as 'radically comprehensible', is a poetry of engagement which embraces a wide range of subjects – political, personal, cinema, art, war – always encouraging the reader to share an experience, an idea, an emotion.
B N Oakman, formerly an academic economist, started writing poetry in 2006. In 2006 he started offering poems to publishers. Subsequently his work has been widely published in magazines, journals and newspapers in Australia, the UK and the USA. He has since published many poems in Australia and overseas as well as a full-length book, In Defence of Hawaiian Shirts (IP, 2010) and two booklets, Chalk Dust (2009) and Secret Heart (2013), both with Mark Time Books. He was awarded a grant by the Literature Board of the Australia Council for 2009. His work is recorded on the ABC Classics CD, Peter Cundall Reads War Poetry and he reads his poetry at various events and festivals. His work has been nominated for The Pushcart Poetry Prize 2015 (USA). Second Thoughts is his second full-length collection. www.bnoakman.com
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