Holland-Batt is Professor of Creative Writing & Literary Studies at the Queensland University of Technology.[2] She is also an active critic, writing for publications including The Australian, The Monthly and Australian Book Review.[2]The Australian appointed Holland-Batt in 2020 as their columnist for poetry.[11]
Critical response
Holland-Batt's formal imagination transports the reader fluently through mythological, personal, artistic, geographical and historical landscapes. Violence, caused by the pursuit of beauty or truth, is appraised with virtuosity and unfailing precision. In the opening poem, "Medusa", Holland-Batt gives us the striking image of the drifting mind, 'pure and poisonous', drawing in its shadow as the soul billows out. This dichotomy portends the poet's almost surgical objectivity, her capacity for opening up subjects. Yet she animates these poems with the spirit of Perseus, courageously risking what is known for a language 'with a force that could break our lives'... Holland-Batt entwines the past into a rich and inventive lyricism of the present.
Kenneth Slessor Prize citation for The Hazards[12]
Holland-Batt's work has frequently been praised for its lyricism, linguistic precision, and metaphorical dexterity.[citation needed] Holland-Batt's debut collection, Aria, was described as "most impressive and haunting" by The Sydney Morning Herald, and as a "knockout" by leading Australian poetry critic Martin Duwell.[13] Writing in The Age, Robert Adamson described Aria as evidence that "Holland-Batt appears to be a major poet from the start".[14] In The Canberra Times, critic Peter Pierce likened Holland-Batt's "energetic approach to imagery" to that of Sylvia Plath, and praised her awareness of the "twin reserves of myth and metaphor".[15]
The Hazards, Holland-Batt's second volume, was praised as "a virtuoso performance" by The Sydney Morning Herald,[16] and "an absolute gem of a collection overspilling with poems of compelling urgency and dazzling accomplishment" by The Australian.[17] Writing in Australian Book Review, Cassandra Atherton commented on Holland-Batt's "stark and sumptuous lyricism" and described The Hazards as "a thrilling psycho-geographical evocation of physical and internal landscapes".[18] The judges of the Western Australian Premier's Book Prize observed that The Hazards is marked by "a kind of tough lyricism and an exacting use of language [that] makes for dramatic, assertive poetry" that imagines, "often through surprising metaphors, the 'real and imagined hazards' of living".[19]Geoff Page, writing in The Australian, likewise noted Holland-Batt's facility with metaphor: "The Hazards is dense with metaphorical energy ... in the service of substantial moral and psychological insights."[20]
Holland-Batt's third volume, The Jaguar, centres on the decline and death of the poet's father from Parkinson's disease.[21] Critics responding to The Jaguar have focussed on Holland-Batt's command of metaphor. Poet Judith Beveridge, writing in The Australian, observed that the poems in The Jaguar "are intensely moving not only for their tragic content but because of the way in which the subject matter is explored through dramatic and metaphorical ingenuity. Few poets can achieve this level of transformation, allowing their images to move with argumentative force."[22]Geoff Page, writing in The Sydney Morning Herald, states that "Holland-Batt’s highly metaphorical style has been influential on numerous younger Australian poets, although few seem to equal her almost conversational ease in the medium," and observes that Holland-Batt deploys satire and plain diction alongside "denser, more metaphoric writing": "it’s a mark of Holland-Batt’s self-confidence that she can employ such a sardonic manner alongside other poems that are more orthodoxly poignant."[23]
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