Certain Things


Certain Things is a collection of poems by Australian poet Robert Gray, published by Heinemann in Australia in 1993.
The collection contains 37 poems from a variety of sources, with some published here for the first time.
The collection won the 1994 Victorian Premier's Literary Award – C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry.

Contents

  • "Currawongs"
  • "13th May "
  • "Harmonica"
  • "The Pines"
  • "Travelling"
  • "The Girls"
  • ""
  • "Renga"
  • "In Thin Air"
  • "The Room"
  • "A Testimony"
  • "The West"
  • "Wintry Evenings"
  • "Descent"
  • "Malthusian Island"
  • "Landscape"
  • "Doodling"
  • "The White Roads"
  • "Souvenir"
  • " "
  • "Impromptus"
  • "N.M.G."
  • "On South Head"
  • "Small Hours"
  • "On a Forestry Trail"
  • "The Life of a Chinese Poet"
  • "Shard"
  • "Outside "
  • "Arrivals and Departures"
  • "Stanzas"
  • "Today"
  • "Illusions"
  • "Dawn"
  • "The South Coast, While Looking for a House"
  • "In One Ear..."
  • "Afternoon Walk"
  • "The Hawkesbury River"

    Critical reception

Kevin Hart, writing in The Age, noted that Gray was continuing his examination of his recent themes, meditating "on the contingencies of nature – of the self and nature as nothing other than contingencies." he also noted that in the poet's best poems "we sense, behind the melancholy and even behind the nobility of voice, a principled affirmation of existence."

Awards