(mostly) lake poems features poems centred on life on Budgewoi, a coastal town that is located on the Central Coast of NSW, situated on two peninsulas that is split by the Budgewoi Lake. Inspired by WC Williams’ Paterson and Robert Adamson’s poetry of the Hawkesbury, the poems are in a variety of forms and subject matter in an attempt to capture the uniqueness of the Australian idiom as well as the Australian everyday experience. Apart from its patchwork of found poems, the collection is shaped by the historical reflections, neurotic preoccupations, cosmological ruminations, chance meetings, cultural observations, lacustrine excursions, societal grievances, and wry humour of a pseudo-autobiographical persona. Menken is an exciting new voice to have emerged in Australian poetry in recent years.
