Petra White is a distinctive voice in Australian poetry. 'That Galloping Horse' is her sixth collection, and the first to introduce her to UK readers. Written while living in Melbourne, London and Berlin between 2017 and 2023, this new collection includes 13 elegies that mediate a spiritual anguish through a delight in language and the physical world. White's characteristic, often dark playfulness is also abundant in this collection, with short mysterious lyrics that build layers of irony, and raw narratives that traverse the Nullarbor Highway and the atomic cloud of Maralinga. In its flexible and changeable styles, 'That Galloping Horse' catches many thematic concerns, including proximity to the Ukraine War, domestic life in the reality of planetary demise, the strangeness of post-pandemic Berlin, modern work, marriage and the possibilities of familial love.
Comments on previous collections:
"This is a very accomplished and very complex first book by a poet who can be said to be, already, of considerable importance." -Martin Duwell, Australian Poetry Review, on 'The Incoming Tide'
"Among our poets, I was moved by Petra White with the intense inwardness attained in her near-collected A Hunger." -Chris Wallace-Crabbe, The Sydney Morning Herald, Books of the Year 2015
"'How the Temple was Built' is not an easy poem to describe. Suffice to say that it has something in common with Arthur Boyd's biblical paintings and, arguably, with Ted Hughes's book-length poem Crow... it is satisfyingly physical and meta-physical at the same time." -Geoff Page, The Australian, on 'Reading for a Quiet Morning'
"Petra White's 'Ode on the End' is hectically imperilled - 'He gives/you the necks of your enemies/(fear must have foes)./He draws up a battle/where perhaps there was only a soul'. Her work is often Rilkean internal interrogation, with emphatic alliteration, but there are also finely executed portraits such as 'Older Sister' - 'chore-hungry and chore-fed ... Her fingers fly, her eyes are stone'. -Gig Ryan, The Sydney Morning Herald, on 'Thirty Australian Poets'
