The Grand Reopening

The Grand Reopening, Toby Davidson's third collection, was written during the post-pandemic return to 'normality', a fundamentally abnormal experience now largely consigned to the memory hole Australia reserves for the worst of its history. Through a startling array of poetic styles, Davidson's works refuse this amnesia and instead trace a world encountering itself anew and with new forms of openness, from Sydney bars to Dublin's midnight streets and the active volcanic rim of Santorini where, as ever, nature is teacher.

Toby Davidson is a master of the run-on line, and his end words often create a form of spell-making that works like a lit fuse. These poems move from the accessible, fine-boned lyric to complex narratives that invite close scrutiny and make invitations, not detour signs, towards understanding. The Grand Reopening is a compelling third collection. – Anthony Lawrence

Whether through observing a pod of passing whales, Dublin's seagulls or a drowning cicada, or in musings on love or dental treatment, Davidson's unfailingly precise diction and compression, and disciplined, deeply-considered structural decisions, bring us a new collection which crackles with intense, unpredictable energy. And the final sequence is a knockout. – Marcella Polain

The Grand Reopening is a searing book of love and mortality. In its taut, short lines, the long sequence "His Blood Whisper Scolds the Deathless Intelligence" enters the mind and heart and simply will not leave. – Kevin Hart