The Blessed Affliction is an apt title to describe thirty years of the work of Mark Reid. From the hospital poems (in the footsteps perhaps of Webb and Mackenzie) of Parochial to the divine disputations of later works such as The Address Book sequence, filtered through the ironies and ambivalences of poets such as Berryman, Thomas (R.S.) and Donne, Reid matches despair with wit, in pitching the insurmountable questions of the infinite against the plain fact of the ordinary. Neither comes out on top. We are blessed. We are afflicted. Holding our world together is the necessity, the hope, of poetry. This volume presents the pick of Reid’s first five published collections, along with the new book-length title collection: The Blessed Affliction. ‘Reid’s poems are arresting because their insights are both tactful and revealing; their hesitations, or admissions of doubt, are central. Their questioning of agency is a strength. More than easy celebration or affirmation, they are a poet’s genuinely prayerful searching and praising. They are spiritual permissions. If we notice, if we are alert, we may know. Mark Reid is the finest Minimalist poet in Australia.’ Philip Salom ‘…beneath such simplicity, these poems conceal depths of philosophical and religious thought that are revealed only in repeated readings. Blindside is a work of effortlessly superior intelligence…’ Judges’ Report, 2019 Kenneth Slessor Award
