Getting There

Matt Simpson's poetry has among its principal themes one of coming to terms with the past as a way of understanding the present. In the present collection Simpson continues his journey into his family history. He has also been on other travels: there are poems about Japan, Tasmania, Ireland and the Greek islands of Aegina and Leros. Simpson is not shy of big themes. Here are poems about identity, love, death, illness, friendship. Simpson can be tenderly elegiac as well as celebratory, meditative and also humorous.