Overview

Hazel Hall is not afraid to push boundaries as she explores the traditional sonnet, its connections with classical Japanese forms, and their shared musicality. She points out similarities between these forms, but also celebrates their differences. This collection includes sonnets with haiku or tanka attached, a sonnet using the same rhyme throughout, a sonnet created with fourteen lines of single-line haiku and a fourteen line ghazal in iambic pentameter. Hazel also experiments with rhyming styles, returning to basic concepts of melody and rhyme in her quest to discover 'At what point is a sonnet not a sonnet?' She observes that the sonnet form is barely recognisable in some of her hybrids. Do you agree? Readers are invited to draw their own conclusions. They are also invited to experiment for themselves. According to Beethoven, once you know the rules, you can break them. When it comes to traditional end-lines, octave, sestet and pentameter in a sonnet, Hazel Hall is well practiced. However, her unrhymed experimental free-verse, haibun as sonnets, along with combinations of other Japanese genres like tanka in this collection, not only give credence to Beethoven's affirmation.

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9781922830722

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Reviews

"Hazel Hall is a lover of music as well as words. Her poems tend towards the quality of song, and she speaks of the musicologist George List telling her how 'only stability of intonation distinguishes song from speech.' Many of her poems seek music that may 'with its art, discover or retrace / the sacredness, until it finds a place / within- that prize, that dazzling secret bit / of heaven, when we make meaning out of it.' Although all of her poems are derived from sonnets, they display Hazel's interest in poetic and musical forms in a wonderful range of topics. Unpretentious yet potent descriptions and evocations abound. They can be as simple and haiku-like as this: 'Two magpies on a fence were swapping notes, / swallows were preparing to take leave. / Lorikeets with sapphire-coloured throats / swung on a willow's long kimono sleeves'. Each poem finds a different way to touch the heart. 'Shadow at the Wheel' depicts the nightmares of, one suspects, a woman who has fled an abusive lover: 'I listen, praying not to hear that sound / the dark car humming as it cruises past / headlights dipped, a shadow at the wheel / daring me to peek into the street.' That 'black sedan' might grow to rival 'the black dog' as a proverbial phrase. Harsh times and choices are recalled in ""Returned Soldier 1947"" when a veteran is offered, for PTSD, a generous choice of the best modern remedies: insulin, electro-shock or lobotomy: 'So think about it soldier, chat it over with your wife / and let us have your answer in a day or so.' If you are tired of ""the talented ear-ache of modern poetry"", of poems that seem written less to touch the reader than to show the poet's cleverness, you will warm to Hazel Hall's work. Her poems are about real identifiable events, and she has real and important things to say about each of them. - Dr Mark O'Connor OAM, Olympic Laureate, Enviromentalist and Shakespeare Scholar, and author of The Olive Tree. In this exploration of the many forms that a modern sonnet can take, in A Hint of Rosemary, Hazel Hall displays her mastery of Petrarchan, Shakespearean and hybrid sonnets in her engagement with people, nature, social issues and the past. From the Kongouru first painted by George Stubbs to the ill-fated Robert Scott, from John Keats to an unmarked child's grave at Wallendbeen, each subject is marked by Hall's acute perception and awareness of the world in all its layers and inherent musicality. Her proficiency with Japanese forms is also evident in both the haiku which subtly sub-title each section in this book and in their integration within the sonnet form. This experimentation ranges from a sonnet written in haiku to the adaptation of the sonnet form to haibun. As Hall admits, one must follow a recipe first before experimenting. Hall succeeds in both. A Hint of Rosemary is a book that both obeys and challenges the conventions of the English sonnet, while dealing with the ordinary and the extraordinary. - Carmel Summers, author of Lost in the Pleiades"

Author Information

Hazel Hall is an Australian poet and musicologist who works across a wide range of poetic forms. She holds a PhD in Education from Monash University. From 2012 to 2018, Hazel was founder and convenor of the School of Music Poets, ACT: an ekphrastic group that collaborated with musicians, song writers, and artists to produce a series of poetry chapbooks. She directed the monthly event Poetry at Manning Clark House in Canberrra from 2018 to 2022. Hazel's work can be found in a wide range of local and overseas anthologies and journals and has been a featured poet in printed journals, on websites and blogs. She has won a number of prizes and editors' awards, and her work has been peer selected three times for the Red Moon Anthology. Hazel co-edited Flood Fire and Drought; One Last Border; Silver Fugue, collected works of the School of Music Poets; and The Ink Sinks Deeper. Her own collections include eggshell sky with calligraphers Angela Hillier, Narelle Jones and Parkinsons artists; Step by Step with tai chi practitioner Angelina Egan and Moonlight over the Siding, featuring artwork by the late Robert Tingey. Her chapbook Severed Web, with artist Deborah Faeyrglenn, highlights environment and climate change. Hazel's crown of sonnets Please Add Your Signature and Date it Here is a radio play exploring problems in aged care. Breathe In, Breathe Out is a chapbook of haiku linked with answering tanka and cherita. Also due in 2024, with poet Moya Pacey and artist Leena Clark is Featherfall, a collection of poems exploring human relationships with birds. In 2024, Hazel will judge her fourth international contest, which to date have included the Tanka Society of America's Sanford Goldstein Contest (2019), the Haiku Poets of North America's Tanka Contest (2021) and the British Haiku Society's Tanka Contest (2023).

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