The questioning critical observant voice in Jennifer Maiden’s first book Tactics (1974) is obsessive yet self-deprecating. Her elegant assured language loudly signals a new talent, and her prolific and constantly varying output since then has shown this talent honed and always developing, often in unexpected directions and sometimes into prose fiction. In Mines (1999), her thirteenth volume of poetry, she reclaims specifically feminine language – “vaginal red” – and writes a new form of mini-sequence, ‘cluster’ poems Maiden calls them, where poems have almost the same start or the same end, but the rest of the poem veers off each time, so the repetition is like a motif. These poems question notions of voice and time, as if revealing parallel or expanding universes. The paintings of Georgia O’Keefe, gemstones and the poet’s daughter are some of the actual inspirations in Mines, spinning the poems out into endless reflection.

As has become more common in her work, actual political figures such as Richard Butler (Australian Chief Weapons Inspector to Iraq in the 1990s, and former Ambassador to the UN) and Madeleine Albright also figure as pivots for a broader philosophising. Maiden’s viewpoint is never singular, but multiple. The following selection of poems has been taken from four of her books from 1974 to 2000.

Poems
Madeleine Albright Wears Two Lapel Pins
In the Gloaming
The Cadre
The Sponge
Off the Cuff


Bibliography
Poetry
Tactics, 1974
The Problem of Evil, 1975
The Occupying Forces, 1975
Mortal Details, 1977
Birthstones
The Border Loss, 1979
For The Left Hand
The Trust, 1988
Bastille Day, 1990
Selected Poems, 1990
The Winter Baby, 1990
Acoustic Shadow, 1993
Mines, 1999

Novels
The Terms, 1982
Play with Knives, 1990