Green Dance - Jena Woodhouse
Costi, Angela (2019) Cherish, wonder and the want to protect: Angela Costi reviews ‘Green Dance’ by Jena Woodhouse. Rochford Street Review. See the full review at: https://rochfordstreetreview.com/2019/09/27/cherish-wonder-and-want-to-protect-angela-costi-reviews-green-dance-by-jena-woodhouse/
Some of us are fortunate to have experienced those places where nature awakens us to become its disciple. A pause on a mountain top or a walk in a rain forest compels us to contemplate our humanity. However to write about this experience without undertones of politics nor activism, rather with precise lyric and evocative tone is what Jena Woodhouse has undoubtedly achieved in her most recent poetry collection, Green Dance. Through her lens, she amplifies the micro of our natural world in such a way where you can’t help but cherish, wonder and want to protect what we have left. …
The intersection of myth and mysticism abounds throughout the poems … . Whether it’s ‘Richmond Birdwing Butterflies’ or ‘Regent Bowerbirds’ or ‘Currawongs and Magpies’, Woodhouse is interested in unpacking their essence and resonance. In Green Dance, Woodhouse finds a place among such poets as Judith Wright and Mary Oliver, renowned for immortalising earth, nature and species in their poems.
Clifton, Alison (2020) ‘Green Dance’ by Jena Woodhouse (Calanthe Press, 2018) Review. Stylus Lit. See full review at: http://styluslit.com/reviews/green-dance-tamborine-mountain-poems/
This small collection, at only twenty-eight pages, is like a bright jewel: splashes of ruby red adorn a cover depicting three black cockatoos with red-tipped tails perched on black branches silhouetted against a red sun. What a lovely thing it is, as if someone has taken a sumptuously illustrated coffee-table book and distilled it into words to create a chapbook of exquisite poetry. …
Woodhouse is an accomplished poet with many publications and awards to her name. She is also a lyricist and an author of prose, including children’s fiction. These layers of her identity are evident in this vital and vivacious poetry, which is as alive with promise as the soil after rain. Her vision of nature is beguiling and bewitching as it resists the blinkered and the boringly clichéd – perhaps owing to her background as a children’s writer. Fresh and invigorating as the air on the mountain that she repeatedly describes in this collection, Woodhouse’s poetry may remind the reader of the undiluted exuberant joyfulness that fine eco-poetry can express.
Costi, Angela (2019) Cherish, wonder and the want to protect: Angela Costi reviews ‘Green Dance’ by Jena Woodhouse. Rochford Street Review. See the full review at: https://rochfordstreetreview.com/2019/09/27/cherish-wonder-and-want-to-protect-angela-costi-reviews-green-dance-by-jena-woodhouse/
Some of us are fortunate to have experienced those places where nature awakens us to become its disciple. A pause on a mountain top or a walk in a rain forest compels us to contemplate our humanity. However to write about this experience without undertones of politics nor activism, rather with precise lyric and evocative tone is what Jena Woodhouse has undoubtedly achieved in her most recent poetry collection, Green Dance. Through her lens, she amplifies the micro of our natural world in such a way where you can’t help but cherish, wonder and want to protect what we have left. …
The intersection of myth and mysticism abounds throughout the poems … . Whether it’s ‘Richmond Birdwing Butterflies’ or ‘Regent Bowerbirds’ or ‘Currawongs and Magpies’, Woodhouse is interested in unpacking their essence and resonance. In Green Dance, Woodhouse finds a place among such poets as Judith Wright and Mary Oliver, renowned for immortalising earth, nature and species in their poems.
Clifton, Alison (2020) ‘Green Dance’ by Jena Woodhouse (Calanthe Press, 2018) Review. Stylus Lit. See full review at: http://styluslit.com/reviews/green-dance-tamborine-mountain-poems/
This small collection, at only twenty-eight pages, is like a bright jewel: splashes of ruby red adorn a cover depicting three black cockatoos with red-tipped tails perched on black branches silhouetted against a red sun. What a lovely thing it is, as if someone has taken a sumptuously illustrated coffee-table book and distilled it into words to create a chapbook of exquisite poetry. …
Woodhouse is an accomplished poet with many publications and awards to her name. She is also a lyricist and an author of prose, including children’s fiction. These layers of her identity are evident in this vital and vivacious poetry, which is as alive with promise as the soil after rain. Her vision of nature is beguiling and bewitching as it resists the blinkered and the boringly clichéd – perhaps owing to her background as a children’s writer. Fresh and invigorating as the air on the mountain that she repeatedly describes in this collection, Woodhouse’s poetry may remind the reader of the undiluted exuberant joyfulness that fine eco-poetry can express.
Costi, Angela (2019) Cherish, wonder and the want to protect: Angela Costi reviews ‘Green Dance’ by Jena Woodhouse. Rochford Street Review. See the full review at: https://rochfordstreetreview.com/2019/09/27/cherish-wonder-and-want-to-protect-angela-costi-reviews-green-dance-by-jena-woodhouse/
Some of us are fortunate to have experienced those places where nature awakens us to become its disciple. A pause on a mountain top or a walk in a rain forest compels us to contemplate our humanity. However to write about this experience without undertones of politics nor activism, rather with precise lyric and evocative tone is what Jena Woodhouse has undoubtedly achieved in her most recent poetry collection, Green Dance. Through her lens, she amplifies the micro of our natural world in such a way where you can’t help but cherish, wonder and want to protect what we have left. …
The intersection of myth and mysticism abounds throughout the poems … . Whether it’s ‘Richmond Birdwing Butterflies’ or ‘Regent Bowerbirds’ or ‘Currawongs and Magpies’, Woodhouse is interested in unpacking their essence and resonance. In Green Dance, Woodhouse finds a place among such poets as Judith Wright and Mary Oliver, renowned for immortalising earth, nature and species in their poems.
Clifton, Alison (2020) ‘Green Dance’ by Jena Woodhouse (Calanthe Press, 2018) Review. Stylus Lit. See full review at: http://styluslit.com/reviews/green-dance-tamborine-mountain-poems/
This small collection, at only twenty-eight pages, is like a bright jewel: splashes of ruby red adorn a cover depicting three black cockatoos with red-tipped tails perched on black branches silhouetted against a red sun. What a lovely thing it is, as if someone has taken a sumptuously illustrated coffee-table book and distilled it into words to create a chapbook of exquisite poetry. …
Woodhouse is an accomplished poet with many publications and awards to her name. She is also a lyricist and an author of prose, including children’s fiction. These layers of her identity are evident in this vital and vivacious poetry, which is as alive with promise as the soil after rain. Her vision of nature is beguiling and bewitching as it resists the blinkered and the boringly clichéd – perhaps owing to her background as a children’s writer. Fresh and invigorating as the air on the mountain that she repeatedly describes in this collection, Woodhouse’s poetry may remind the reader of the undiluted exuberant joyfulness that fine eco-poetry can express.