Very few poems grab the reader. Not many are memorable. After repeated re-readings I gave myself a test. I ran my eye down the index of each book, and tried to recall the poem.

The result surprised me. The Mattara volume scored hands down in memorability. I’d inclined to think that its choice of so many long poems was an error. I realise now that they’ve stayed with me, not always because I entirely approved them, but I’ll grant they give more for memory to hold on to.

And although the Australian. selection contained many more short poems than the Mattara, I remembered no more. l won’t speculate further than to say that the Mattara had more to choose from, and it is an established contest.

The overlap between the volumes was a predictable one, Diane Fahey, Alan Gould, Rob Johnson, Philip Martin, Jan Owen, Geoff Page, Philip Salom, and yes, three of those poets are fairly recent arrivals, two of them have yet to publish a book.

Poems that grab? Some stale on a second reading. Others grow on you, a little, but the recognition of the best is usually instantaneous. Too few long poems have an organic growth, too many are flatly written, rely on content, are workmanlike rather than making full use of the resources of poetry. Not that I’m opting for mellifluous verse. as against the strong or rugged, but there’s surely a limit at which it ceases to be poetry. In such a category I’d place Robin Davies. ‘At the New Reservoir’, (Mattara) seems to me indubitably prose. Try reading it aloud there’s not the ghost of a rhythm, surely the first test of poetry. The fact that each line contains ten syllables means nowt to me, as a reader.

Chris Wallace Crabbe has spoken of ‘unbuttoned meditations on a theme’ as a feature of today’s Australian poetry. Some of the examples we have here before us are too unbuttoned, would do better zipped up, in both senses, or shrunk to fit the weight of what they have to say.

The judges of the Australian contest speak of the move towards larger forms as showing an enlarged vision of the scope of poetry, and a healthy sense of ambition (to make a prize volume?). There is, however, no virtue in length alone. try the memory test on your own mental volume of verse.

Chris Wallace Crabbe said in the same context that few women seem to tackle this type of poem. That they can do it well is shown in Diane Fahey’s prize-winning poem (Mattara) and Caroline Caddy’s ‘Letters from the North’ in the other collection. Has the fact women don’t do it got anything to do with their small showing in these books? 30% of the poets in the Australian Anthology are women, 20% in the Mattara.

The Mattara judges seem to have found more wit among their best. Both books, seem equally strong on the personal and meditative, both have a fair slice of the ‘I have been there’, too often untransmuted from travelogue to poetry.

I find myself very largely in agreement with the judges’ placings in the Mattara contest. First place was taken by Diane Fahey’s ‘Poem of Thanksgiving’. This graceful and profound poem is both moving and restrained. By subtle placement of a word or two she relates the poem to its title, there is a wonderful sense of a world, a relationship, renewed; resonances, images of nature that are, in the context of the poem, quite thrilling: Julian Croft’s long poem, ‘The West Wind’ has something of the same qualities.

There is too much of Mark O’Connor. I’d support the choice of one, ‘The Fourteen Syllogisms of the Cross’ as having something of importance to say and saying it like a poet. ‘North Head Quarantine Station’ is an unexceptional retelling of history – oh the books that must be searched for subjects! ‘Love in the Blue Mountains’ is a clever exercise, a tale of the flowers, the birds and the bees dished up in human physiological terms. It hardly raised the hair on the back of my neck, though its ending, where the possum explored the banksia’s ‘muff’ I fear will return to haunt me. Perhaps one’s meant to laugh. But as an effect, it’s both laboured and vulgar.

Among, the poems distinguished by the judges as highly regarded is Alan Gould’s ‘Letter to Jenna’, a witty and accurate account of various cats I’d have replaced, however, Thomas Naisby’s poem, which collapses in the last stanza, by Kerry Scuffins ‘The Second Month of Spring’, which does for a death what Diane Fahey had done for life. Perhaps the judges in recommending found it too like the winner, hard luck for Scuffins if so. There is a similarity in style also, the same restraint and power. It is good to see the emotion was not disqualified in the contest. Philip Salom’s recommended ‘The Third Horizon’ is another strongly felt poem.

A likeness in tone overall perhaps, in this collection, though some poems, like Philip Martin’s ‘Dream Poem’, are more elegant and mysterious than most. As a whole, we have here poetry that is accessible, intelligent, original and various in subject.

One wonders, face to face with a volume like the Australian’s selection whether we are writing too much poetry, competent, assured, but not entirely necessary. Still, when washing for gold, one can’t expect the pan to be full of nuggets. It’s a marvellous pastime poetry, like a superior sort of crossword puzzle, but looking at these fifty-one poems, I get the impression that only eight or nine took the writer by the scruff of the neck and demanded to be written.

I found three good sized nuggets, each very different. Alan Gould, recommended in the Mattara contest, has here a gentle evocation of the natural world in winter. ‘Ice on Windows’ sparkles with metaphor, ‘observing . . ./how matter magnetizes metaphor/ how metaphor sustains the mettable.’ In ‘fog’ a huge stillness descends. ‘Rain’ comes like ‘the ovation of a vast convention’, ‘The First Real Frost’ appears ‘like an elaborate stunt/ perhaps that icicle the moon contrived it’.

Right next to him is John Griffin’s ‘My father, visiting’, a fine, compassionate portrait, very recognisable. Alex Scovron’s ‘Optical Illusions’, comprising ‘Snapshots’, ’Mirror’, ‘Eyes’, considers the matter of identity, guilt, family, aging in various mirrors, is perspicacious, convincing.

The anthologies, as my title says, are more alike than not. The· reader asks, is this the way that poetry is heading, sober, discursive, restrained, is a little pedestrian, but not without feeling? Are all the hats gone over the windmill already?