Striped World, The

by Emma Jones

With their tidal imagination, the poems in this debut collection sweep between old worlds and new, seeking the lost and recovering the found among shipwrecks, underwater zoos and discovered lands. Emma Jones brings her inventive worlds dramatically to life in a series of vividly distilled meetings: of settlers and indigenous peoples, of seawaters and shore, of humanity and the wilds of nature. Here tigers stalk the captive and the free, while Death encounters his own double and Daphne tells of her new leaves, 'They sing, and make the world.' The same might be said of the poems themselves in this restless and memorable search for belonging.

Genres: Poetry

64 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. This author is entered with 4 spaces.

Emma Jones was born in Sydney to an Australian father and British mother, and studied at the universities of Sydney and Cambridge. Her first book, The Striped World, has won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Queensland Premier's Literary Award for Best Collection and is shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. She is currently poet-in-residence at the Wordsworth Trust.

Reviews

[jeniwren · Rating 3 out of 5]

For 2017 I am reading poetry at bedtime. This collection is a debut from Australian poet Emma Jones.

[Nick Spencer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not great though EJ clearly has some talent; think she thinks she needs to be more 'difficult' than she does

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes poetry collections can become more than the sum of their parts, this one unfortunately sags a little in the middle. Emma Jones is from Sydney and the turns of phrase can be brilliant but I’m not sure reading the whole collection is better than reading a few poems at will. (So says a child of the music track generation rather than the full curated album one.)

[Juliano · Rating 4 out of 5]

As an impulse purchase, I had no expectations when reading Emma Jones' 'The Striped World' - that said, I found it to be an excellent collection, the majority of the poems powerful and thought-provoking.

[Carrie Etter]

An impressive debut. The long poems are particularly striking.

[Maxine McEwan · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 stars. Daphne is my stand-out.

[blckshrt · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was an interesting read. To give you an example of a poem in this book:

Coda

You've worn yourself out among wan things,
pills and paper, bloodless birds.
And you've worn yourself like a whimsical dress
every day, and put yourself on, and said
'here's a gathered thing'
to the bland clock of the bedroom mirror.

The commuter wind has a sympathy,
and the commuter sun,
who illuminates leaves like a monk.

You don't see things or people, you see space -
the winch between two branches. Something spoke,
you answered. And you don't know what, or when.

[Geoff · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found her poems difficult to tune into except a few near the end. 'Citizenship': with it' phrase 'it's good to be an alien'.
And a long rambling one 'Zoos for the Dead': I have two things: a parrot, and a house by the water,
My parrot's name is Narcissus, ‘sad in his drag’, ‘he hates flying, so I take his cage for a walks’.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovely imagination and commitment to image, taking language farther.