WAR STORIES - Tecno-Libro

?These days many individual collections of poetry (and some anthologies as well) are presented in language which all too often, offers the particular experiences of the poets as if they were clues in a cryptic crossword. If we could only put those poetic hints together (we tell ourselves) wed be in a position to know what they were pointing towards all along. Antonia Hildebrands collection is a far cry from these puzzle works. Her poems are invariably so skilfully handled that they may seem to the reader to be easily achieved. They are not, of course, although the illusion that such things are easily accomplished is surely one of the reasons so many try their hand at poetry. Bruce Dawe ?In these poems the violence of war is not confined to battle fields. There are cities where dead children lie in residential streets covered in the dust of bombed buildings, and, closer to our home, conflict that is fostered by hateful words spoken at suburban barbecues.