The Book
National Award
for View from the Lucky Hotel
Five Islands Press — Press Release 2 May 2009:
The Fellowship of Australian Writers has announced that View from the Lucky Hotel is a winner of the FAW Anne Elder Award, for the "best first collection of poetry published in Australia in 2008".
"innovative poetics" — judges Connie Barber and Jennifer Harrison
Read the press release >>
VftLH Press Release; Five Islands Press 090502
Read the Reviews
Download the full texts of reviews here.
(pdf format)
"..So, a fierce and fearless poet who has no investment in the higher moral ground, but who actively embraces the most difficult facts, feelings, issues. And what else? This is also a book of warmth and friendship, and of new people, places, experiences, adventurously encountered. Characteristically, there is a sharp-witted percipience, a subtle evocation of detail and nuance, and a sense of full human presence — even when the barrage of complexity threatens to overwhelm.
... Throughout the collection, Sandy Fitts' approach to form is flexible and adaptive; it is an instrument both of an ambitious inclusiveness and of a refined, carefully tuned engagement. She offers, in View from the Lucky Hotel, a vibrant, challenging, deeply authentic voice and vision."
Diane Fahey in Reviews in Australian Studies, Vol. 3, No.10, 2008, British Australian Studies Association, Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, London, U.K.
Read >> Fahey: Review of Fitts VftLH; Reviews in Australian Studies"From the opening, prize-winning poem, 'Waiting for Goya', to the closing images of 'Blue Mop', the act of poetry emerges and is scrutinized for what it might do in the world... "
Lyn McCredden in the Australian Book Review, Dec 08/ Jan 09
Read >> McCredden: Review of Fitts VftLH; ABR Dec08"At the heart of this book are those questions of travel that Elizabeth Bishop and many poets since have considered. Importantly, Fitts is a poet prepared to ask questions of her self and of the places she travels in... Her View from the Lucky Hotel is welcome, and long overdue."
Brendan Ryan in Famous Reporter #38, December 08
Read >> Ryan: Review of Fitts VftLH; Famous Reporter # 38
"Her poetry is suffused with a graceful intelligence... "
Tim Metcalf in Five Bells Vol. 15 No.4 & Vol 16 No.1, 2008/2009 Read >> Metcalf: Review of Fitts VftLH; Five Bells 2009
About the poem 'Waiting for Goya'
"The poem's meditative quality has a dramatic and argumentative energy..."
Jennifer Strauss and Mike Ladd
Judges' report on 'Waiting for Goya', winner of Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize 2007.
Read >> Harwood Poetry Prize 07 Judges' Report
"charming brashness.... ...a voice that isn't simply going to bow to posterity."
Ryan Scott, reviewing Best Australian Poems 2008 at www.cordite.org.au
Read >> Scott: Review of Best Aust. Poems 08; Cordite 09
From the cover
of View from the Lucky Hotel
"A wonderfully fresh, subtle and endearing voice." Helen Garner
"Droll, zestful, tender, complicated, meditative, companionable both with persons and with their things — Sandy Fitts’ poems invite the reader into tout le monde." Peter Steele
"‘This joyful cartography’ might well define what Sandy Fitts is about in these poems, whether they’re mapping experiences of Hanoi or central Australia. Resonant with a poetic voice that is ‘strong, /strong enough to celebrate this time and this place…’" Jennifer Strauss
"The poems in View from the Lucky Hotel are fully alive to the world. Many are located in Vietnam, yet while embedded in the specifics of locality, their issues resonate far beyond, alert to economics, politics, culture, history, aesthetics and ethics. In this first collection, Sandy Fitts establishes a signature style that includes lyric, satire, essay, and narrative forms. This is poetry with range and a keen eye."
Five Islands Press