Tracy Ryan is a poet and novelist from Western Australia, notably recognized in the 1990s as a trailblazing feminist poet. Her early works explored the fraught nature of the times and the end of second-wave feminism through personal experience. Ryan often draws inspiration from the world around her and her personal life, with a keen interest in how language can be interrupted and reconfigured for feminist purposes. Her poetry, which has been compared to Sylvia Plath, features mythic underpinnings while asserting its own distinct power.
The Fremantle Press Anthology of Western Australian Poetry is a comprehensive survey of the state's poets from the 19th century to today. Featuring work from 128 poets, and accompanied by biographical notes and an introductory essay by editors John Kinsella and Tracy Ryan, this watershed anthology brings together the poems that have contributed to and defined the way that Western Australians see themselves.
Water is contained in these poems in many different ways- from the water filling a second-hand cooler in an old farmhouse to ocean riptides and impassive dams; from swimming lessons to paddocks layered with water after rain. From scheme water, pipelines and a countryside in the grip of drought - the water in this collection is a many-sided metaphor. Tracy Ryan's latest collection of poems is full of intimate intensity and clear vision, each poem wrought with consummate skill by 'one of Australia's most gifted poets' (Marion May Campbell).