Poetry. Paperback, 98 pages. Taoist poetry, science poetry.
A coat of ashes is my fourth full-length poetry book. The poems seek to create a meeting place between scientific and spiritual discourse, focusing on physics and philosophical Daoism (Taoism), with systems theory (the theory of complex and self-organising systems) as a secondary focus.
Where to get your copy
Buy direct from Recent Work Press
Or contact me to get shipping and payment details for your signed copy! Copies are also available through the Australian public library system.
What readers say
This collection, richly suffused with a personal metaphysics, delicately balances the most crucial aspects of being on a bridge between dark and light. One feels that the words in A coat of ashes might be written and received on the skin.
Dominique Hecq
Jackson’s work is both original and rooted in a number of poetic traditions, which it deftly fuses. The poems in A coat of ashes are beautifully composed, coherent and crystalline. This rich, creative work makes a genuine contribution to contemporary poetry.
Fiona Sampson MBE FRSL
The poems in this book are deep, long breaths; an opportunity to stop and reflect or enter the room of a poet’s meditations. … The plain and mostly quiet language of these works is gentle and subtle even when the content is grappling existential, environmental and social catastrophes.
Pascalle Burton in Cordite
Sample poetry
From the title poem
… The pure tone
of each electron
The pure functions
The math inside the atom
The muscles connecting
the trunk to the legs
The tendons connecting
the moon to the earth
The ligaments connecting
the brain to the bones
A blanket,
A coat of ashes
From Turnings
a chime made
of tuned aluminium tubes
suspended by little strings
in what seems to be silence
silence in what seems to be
suspended by little strings
of tuned aluminium tubes
made a chime
From The catbeing
Her spine is an opening parenthesis,
a yang matched by the yin of her tail
All along her rounded back
her filaments stand proud, separate,
like iron filings inscribing
the north and south of a magnetic field.
The purring catbeing, earthed, live,
is locus, nexus, nucleus—
a cluster of cells making waves
of Thursday afternoon peace.
Get your copy today!
Or contact me to get shipping and payment details for your signed copy! Copies are also available through the Australian public library system.
Published in 2019 by Recent Work Press. ISBN 9780648404231. Cover design by Recent Work Press. Cover image: ‘Computer simulation of the growth of cosmic structure’ (c) 2005 The Millennium Simulation, Springel et al. (Virgo Consortium), Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics. Reproduced with permission.
Jackson 