Description
She’d read a little Donne:
Something about a Flea, bout the Sunne
Rising… It happened I held Baudelaire
In a translation that seemed pretty fair.
She’d never heard of him. I read out loud
…
‘Who writes like that today?’ my beauty asked,
‘I mean in English?’ ludicrously tasked,
And picturing myself Don Juan in hell,
I gave the fateful name: Clarence Caddell.”
(”Ars Poetica”)
A modern divorce. Child swaps. Regrets, resignations and revisitings; resolutions to reform. In his signature blend of Australian vernacular with traditional rhyme and metre, Clarence Caddell spares no one, least of all himself. His wryly succinct investigations of philosophy and theology amid the mundanity of middle-aged life, reveal things so often buried. BROKEN WORDS marks the maturation of a major talent.
“Clarence Caddell’s Broken Words displays a deep love of the formal poetry tradition; it often echoes the wit and style of Byron as well as the dour wryness of Larkin. Nonetheless, the book is rooted in the present with poems about divorce, online dating, and artificial intelligence that are accessible, yet profound enough to merit pleasurable re-readings.” A.M. Juster
“In a poetry world where attention to form and an interest in the personal seem often to be at odds, Clarence Caddell’s work comes as a revelation of what a skilled poet can do…If you want poems that work on your mind, your breath and your heart, Caddell is your man.” Alex Rettie
(Pre-orders will ship September 15, 2025)
84pp
ISBN: 978-1-7642190-0-6
Publication date: September 15, 2025
