Nocturne - (Pavilion Poetry) by Jodie Hollander (Paperback)

About the Book

Jodie Hollander's compelling second collection charts the emotional journey of the daughter of a professional classical pianist. These bold and arresting poems, rich with musicality, and fierce in their emotional honesty, chart the complicated repercussions of family dysfunction and musical obsession while traversing the landscape of the human condition.

Book Synopsis

Longlisted for Laurel Prize 2023. Set in a technicolour world of dreams, ghosts, classical music, and Key West storms, Jodie Hollander's compelling second collection charts the emotional journey of the daughter of a professional classical pianist. These bold and arresting poems, rich with musicality, and fierce in their emotional honesty, chart the complicated repercussions of family dysfunction and musical obsession while traversing the landscape of the human condition and exploring the need for refuge in the natural world.

Review Quotes

'Nocturne, Jodie Hollander's second collection following her stunning 2017 debut, My Dark Horses, is certainly of the night - these poems chant and sing the scales of human experience against a backdrop of unknowable wildness. Her poems chime with the music of the spheres collaborating in a symphony that is both an aural feast and a reminder of the interconnectedness of all things. Nocturne makes truly beautiful music.' Victoria Kennefick

'A crashing, highly tempestuous work... These are powerful and memorable poems within an equally powerful and resonant collection.' J.S. Watts, High Window

'A torrent of shocking and revelatory poetry simmers between the covers of My Dark Horses, pulling the reader in with the very first poem... It takes great courage to write of love, grief, abuse, and survival with such unflinching honesty.'
Erica Goss, Pedestal Magazine

'In Jodie Hollander's poems, it is always monsoon season. Things come crashing down from the sky - pianos, coconuts, kangaroos, telephone receivers - into a fragile world, and the poems look up from the debris, changed.'
Caroline Bird

'Jodie Hollander, who may be one of the best poets at work right now, follows up her brilliant My Dark Horses with Nocturne, which continues her hard exploration of generational trauma and familial abuse... Something I found especially moving is the awareness and channelling of her rage, which floored me throughout.' Juliano Zaffino

'Jodie Hollander's powerful debut collection is as hypnotic and rich as a dream ... Hollander's are finely tuned and strongly narrative poems, crafted with strong openings that immediately draw the reader in.'
Suzannah V. Evans, Times Literary Supplement

'The poems in this collection, both blunt and lyric, stoic and tender, roll over the palate like the flavors of a complex dish.'
Donna Vorreyer, Rhino Poetry

'The underlying emotional urgency of Jodie Hollander's poems is undeniable - but it's their tone that makes them unignorable. This meeting of searing family dysfunction and poignant metaphor with her matter-of-fact American vernacular strikes sparks.'
Susan Wicks

'These poems are full of situations redolent of grief and loss; yet they are far too vigorous to be depressing. The effect... is not of despair, but of rising to the occasion.'
Meg Crane, The Wilfred Owen Association

About the Author

Jodie Hollander was raised in a family of classical musicians. Her work has appeared in publications such as The Poetry Review, The Dark Horse, The Rialto, Verse Daily, The Warwick Review, The Manchester Review, Australia's Best Poems, 2011, and Australia's Best Poems of 2015. Her debut pamphlet, The Humane Society, was released with Tall-Lighthouse in 2012. She is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship in South Africa, and was awarded a MacDowell Colony fellowship in 2015.