Emptiness: Asian Poems 1998–2012

From the teeming cities of Singapore, Tokyo and Beijing to the quiet of a Malaccan street, a Honshu mountain or even a Malay cemetery in Cape Town, Mateer’s journeys are out into the unknown world and deep into the mind. Like the early twentieth century French poet and archaeologist Victor Segalen, who is key to the book’s later poems on China, Mateer always affirms the power and pleasure of the foreign.

PRAISE FOR THE BOOK

‘Despite the years of writing they represent, both collections bear a freshness of focus,’ Cordite Poetry Review

‘John Mateer is the best guide I know to the poetics of travelling in what we call Asia.’ Barry Hill

‘Emptiness, autumnal in tone and intellectually restless, is a wonderful introduction to John Mateer’s meditations on the intersections between places, selves and histories that make up his Asian poems.’ West Australian

‘Mateer holds his mirror to both poets’ travels in Asia in a number of superb, powerful poems which blend actual events and people with abstract notions of being, questioning the role of poetry in perceiving and creating meaning.’ Wasafiri