The Taste of River Water

Disarming, warm, and always accessible, Cate Kennedy’s poems make ordinary experiences glow. Everything that suffuses her well-loved prose is here: compassion, insight, lyrical precision, and the clear, minimalist eye that reveals how life can turn on a single moment. Musing on the undercurrents and interconnections between legacy, memory, motherhood, and the natural world, the poems in this exhilarating collection begin on the surface and then take us, gracefully and effortlessly, to a far more thought-provoking place. Grounded in lived experience, with all its mysteries and consolations, they resonate with a passionate, sensuous honesty.

Praise for Cate Kennedy’s earlier poetry collections, Joyflight and Signs of Other Fires

‘These poems are driven by Kennedy’s instinct for story, character and place, but there’s a moment when the poems suddenly open up, out of nowhere, and we find we’re standing inside ourselves, in that pure, torn-open moment.’ — BRONWYN LEA

‘Sensory, rich and compelling. Kennedy gives us a new look at the familiar strangeness of place in which the sum of the parts forms a marvellous whole … This book is full of seamlessly constructed, beautiful images that are hard to fault. These are poems of great hope and richness of spirit.’ — MARK O’FLYNN