Wayne Russell unsettles and eases, often in the same poem. Romantic in temperament, a poet of the sensual and the visceral, his silences are as meaningful as his sounds. He is thought provoking, heartbreaking, celebratory, and unflinching in the face of evil. Grief, joy, doubt, certainty, loss and love are within his realm. A distinctive voice, a poet of absences and presences, he knows the long dark night, the hard hours, and the calm ecstasies of the meadow where birds sing. Contemporary poetry would be less than what it is without Wayne Russell. His poems speak our age of what it means to be alive. Like Keats, he is concerned with truth and beauty - Peter Mladinic, author of 'House Sitting' and 'The Homesick Mortician'.