Unlikely Vessels

'The undreamt, unborn horizon, the smack of the ocean beneath this brilliant collection, and in Pamela Leach a strong new voice beside us to navigate the thrilling risk of this voyage within!' - Dr Mark Macleod, Charles Sturt University

'To read Unlikely Vessels is to embark upon, in the poet's own words, "a wonder-journey", to cross from known to unknown territories and back again. It is a quest to discover the meanings of the sea in lives both ordinary and extraordinary: migrants, pilots, ferry passengers, ship-breakers, deckhands. The waters are deep or shallow, clear or murky, benign or treacherous. Pamela Leach navigates with concentrated attention and lexical resourcefulness; her eye is caught along the way by the anomalous and the disconcerting. These are wise, penetrating and compassionate poems.' - Louise Oxley, Tasmanian poet

'With a bright, engaged eye and wonderfully assured syntax, Pamela brings us a world of familiar detail re-voiced as cultural observation. By turns pragmatic and esoteric, there are no separations between body, boat, ocean, moon, and the horrors of deaths at sea and in poverty. Her work pulses with sonic power and a questing sense of the journey that is life.' - Esther Ottaway, Australian poet