Hothouse

Hothouse Synopsis

Hothouse, Tracy Ryan's,/b> most recent collection of poems, was published in 2002 in her
native Australia to great critical acclaim. It is
essentially a collection of flower poems which
focus, not on the alienation of humans from
the plant world, but instead their similarities.
In them we see the grafting of the organic
world onto the personal, the emotional, the
sexual, in language which is both 'bluntly luscious'
(her own phrase) and at the same time
'pruned' into deceptively simple, short lines.

"Hothouse is a collection of intense poems
which explore with great precision the ever
shifting and precarious boundaries between
self and the world. Sometimes Tracy Ryan
reminds me a little of Sylvia Plath - sometimes
she reminds me a little of the strength
and savagery of Gig Ryan, but mostly she is
her own self, dancing with a language forged
in talent and courage."
Dorothy Hewett (Australian Book Review)

TRACY RYAN was born in Western Australia and has taught literature and creative writing at various universities in Australia and in England where she was a Judith E Wilson Junior Visiting Fellow at Robinson College, Cambridge in 1998, and where she taught a course on Australian
Literature, Art and Film at the University of East Anglia in 1999. She has also worked as an editor on literary magazines in Australia. In 2000, she won the Western Australian Premier's Prize for Poetry for her collection The Willing Eye (FACP, Australia / Bloodaxe, UK).