War Stories

Poems for the Age of Fallibility

‘These days many individual collections of poetry (and some anthologies as well) are presented in language which all too often, offers the particular experiences of the poets as if they were clues in a cryptic crossword. If we could only put those poetic hints together (we tell ourselves) we’d be in a position to know what they were pointing towards all along. Antonia Hildebrand’s collection is a far cry from these puzzle works.  Her poems are invariably so skilfully handled that they may seem to the reader to be easily achieved. They are not, of course, although the illusion that such things are easily accomplished is surely one of the reasons so many try their hand at poetry.’ – Bruce Dawe

‘In these poems the violence of war is not confined to battle fields. There are cities where dead children lie in residential streets covered in the dust of bombed buildings, and, closer to our home, conflict that is fostered by hateful words spoken at suburban barbecues. In War Stories, Antonia Hildebrand will not let us ignore the burning cities on another continent, or accept the hateful words that would justify conflict. In these poems she sees our world as one community, a community that is being destroyed by the violence that affects us all. She writes about the historical brutality of South African apartheid and our own colonial past, the present day atrocities in Syria, and the terror of abuse in a suburban home. These are the real war stories and Hildebrand will not accept monuments that glorify conflict without showing the ugly reality of humans caught in the violence. By forcing us to accept the reality of war, these poems make a powerful plea for peace.’ – Robin Hillard