The Taste of River Water: new and selected poems - Softcover

‘Kennedy's career as a poet has evolved in parallel with her success as a short-story writer and novelist and her accessible poems display the hallmarks of a poet increasingly well-practiced in her craft. There is much to admire here.’ ** (four stars)

– Bookseller and Publisher

‘Pack[s] an emotional punch. Kennedy excels at drawing extraordinary details out of the seemingly mundane minutiae of everyday life, with a sharp, focused eye for the politics of the personal. Her depictions of rural life and the Australian landscape are particularly evocative. It's a welcome addition to the often-underrated canon of Australian poetry.’

– Herald Sun

‘Cate Kennedy presents a long feast in The Taste of River Water. In describing the act of living ― as she does with such potency; mouth-watering ― she creates a new life.’

– InPress Magazine

‘[Like] stepping into water from air that is almost the same temperature, hardly noticing one is at the will of the sea, suddenly ... [Kennedy] relies on getting the reader comfortable before providing something like this change in the atmosphere by the time the poem is out.’

– Luke Beesley, Readings Monthly

‘Kennedy writes fine poetry ... marvellous.’

– The Age

‘Kennedy is at her most effective when dropping spartan images into her lines like stones into a lake. Several pages later the ripples are still moving.’

– Kate Fagan, The Australian

Cate Kennedy is an award-winning short-story writer and the author of the highly acclaimed novel The World Beneath, which won the People s Choice Award in the NSW Premier s Literary Awards in 2010. Her short-story collection, Like a House on Fire, won the Steele Rudd Award in the 2013 Queensland Premier s Literary Awards. She is also the author of a travel memoir, Sing, and Don t Cry, and the poetry collections Joyflight, Signs of Other Fires and The Taste of River Water, which won the Victorian Premier s Literary Award for Poetry in 2011. She lives on a secluded bend of the Broken River in north-east Victoria.