Andrew Taylor: Australia’s Poet of the (Extra)Ordinary

Abstract

Andrew Taylor (1940-) has been regarded as one of the most significant living Australian poets largely due to the fact of his unusual use of the poetic language and the selection of topics. He undoubtedly belongs to the group of the poets, like John Kinsella, who create mastery in their so-called ‘niche’ market, quietly continuing to produce compositions of remarkable quality, and receiving national and international recognition for their achievements. Andrew Taylor’s Impossible Preludes (Poems 2008-2014) is a unique and beautiful retrospective on life, love and everything in between, with its full array of extraordinariness embedded in the ordinariness of everyday life. Each line is a story within itself, painting a picture for the reader to follow as vividly as one might expect in an art gallery. Every poem is full of colour and weight as it takes you on a journey into the mind of this creative and talented individual. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to disclose these elements in Andrew Taylor’s poetry that make it so extraordinary in its ordinariness and find out possible sources of this idiosyncrasy.