Reviews of Fragile Context

'Kristin Hannaford's poems ... thematically blur or dissolve lines, those related ones that exist between culture and nature. She invokes the binary to acknowledge one's reliance on the other, to promote the reader's recognition of one because of the other, and just subtly, the danger of one overwhelming the other. In such a way, the form of the poem and its awareness of itself creates a beautiful irony, that the poem is a product of culture, of humankind, but would not exist without nature's influence.'
Angela Meyer
Read the full review

'I love poems that tell me new things and take me to new places, and Kristin Hannaford joyously knows that this is the business of poetry'
Peter Bishop Varuna

'Whether Hannaford's poems deal with tropical places, or with the ecology of the personal life, they are all from the intemperate zones of the heart'
Ross Clark

'Love poems, sensuous, joyous, descriptions of our tropical wetlands and unique rainforest: this latest collection by CQ poet Kristin Hannaford, launched in August this year, is a delight to read. As Ross Clark suggests, "Whether Hannaford's poems deal with tropical places or with the ecology of personal life, they are all from the intemperate zones of the heart'. Kristin has attended and tutored several island writers workshops with Idiom 23 over the last several years, and as I read her vivid and visually sensitive verses, I can remember every detail of those weekends lost in the environment of Pumpkin and North Keppel Islands, on Kanomi, the home of the Woppaburra people, and in the Byfield rainforest, and neighbouring Shoalwater Bay, the home of the Darumbal people. Images of beach curlews and their haunting cry, the grasslands, mangroves, driftwood, seas shells and fishing boats inspire Hannaford's rich visual verses, but these aren't the only inspiration for Kristin. Her family is always present in the shadows of her wetlands and eucalypt forests.
Review Idiom 23, Vol 19 December 2007 Reviewer Liz Huf

Reviews of Inhale

collection published in Swelter

"Kristin Hannaford writes about relationships, family, friends and women's experience. Other female artists also shape her perceptions: Janet Frame in particular, who corrects the academic study of ‘hemispherectomies’ and ‘Oliver Sacks oddballs’. ‘Janet Frame screamed at me froml the pages of her asylum/ salvation poetry’ ( I apogee) And in ‘Looking for Sarah there’s the intriguing presence of the female lead from John Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman: she examines ‘ammonite fossils’ on the Lyme Regis sea-shore, and the poem ends with a clever twist as the mysterious woman sets one down that will wait‘forAttenborough to arrive’. The poems I most warmed to were the snapshots of people: stolen moments like Uncle Len’s performance at his daughter’s twenty-first, who made ‘short work of a beer/ turned the sounds of Eagle Rock into the hall/ and danced in a pot bellied fury’"

"Hannaford’s ‘Honeymoon’ embodies the mood and modulations of Australian poetry’s ‘new country’. Cruising in the ‘Torque Flight Valiant ... / Following the Sturt highway, west, to Mildura’, the visible reminders of human penetration of the land are everywhere: ‘Kangaroo after kangaroo lay splayed and bloated’. The poem’s crucial incident is the Valiant hitting a bird and ‘the thud/ under the front left wheel’. The female character stops, walks down the road and picks up a feather but the male is unmoved: ‘All the way to Mildura, Dan makes chicken noises in the car.’

"Swelter (is) permeated with this kind of illusion-free sense of what it means to encounter and to write about landscape today. These are volumes in which the vagaries of human response and emotion are measured against the omnipresent natural………Both books also testify to the intelligence, craft and preoccupations which mark off Australian poetry’s new country terrain."

                                                         Brian Musgrave, Coppertales

‘It takes a special kind of confidence to allow your poem to walk unaided on such tight, bald lines.’

‘Many of Hannaford’s poems look at the odd view, and refuse to arrive there by the scenic route’

‘Once you’ve taken time with the contents of Inhale, stopped and savoured, stared into space, the poems begin to form part of a whole rather than standing on their own, and the link, I think, is nature. Nature as redeemer – “two bodies are swimming / listening for the shrill keening of whale songs”; as emblem-of-life – “A body intended for sediment / leaves a footprint on this other planet”; as basis for image – “Over on the riverbank a white box eucalypt / is struggling to keep blossom-laden branches dry.”

                                                         Patricia Prime, Stylus Poetry Journal Oct 2003

Kristin Hannaford's section, 'Inhale' contains some vivid evocations of the tropics: 'long shadow arms along the hoop pine, / the humidity, heavy with scent' ('Yoga, Queen St, Yeppoon'). It is an olfactory environment, and smells sit in the creases and furrows of many of her pieces: 'scents of citrus', 'pungent underarms', 'the dank wet soil // smells metallic'.

’Her education is integral to her poetry. She brings touches of scepticism to matters of superstition, more rooted in earth and practicality’

‘Hannaford's poetry explores, feels and offers sensual insight into skin, heat and water. Hers is the braver poetry ( )…, on a firmer footing when exploring form, and immersed in the world surrounding her’

                                                         Stephen Lawrence, JAS Review of Books Nov 2003