Deep in the Valley of Tea Bowls

Rod Usher’s third collection, Convent Mermaid, is full of wit and sadness, love and loss. Many of the poems spring from his long experience as a journalist, novelist and from years of living and working in Europe. As Les Murray has written, Rod´s poetry inspires both tears and laughter. He’s equally at home in poetic conversation with Emily Dickinson, David Bowie and Federico Garcia Lorca, in revisiting Cro-Magnon Man, or portraying the to-and-fro of love and sex. His poems find their feet in Australia, Spain, England and the U.S., their rhyme typically embedded rather than obligatory, though he bows to the tight rules of haiku.