Original Clichés

‘If Cliché is a democratically elected form of truth, then Rob Walker is sitting as an Independent and disrupting proceedings from the cross-benches. He’s been warned by the Speaker.’ — Mike Ladd (poet, founding presenter/producer of ABC RN’s Poetica)

‘Rob Walker’s Original Clichés is a wry, sardonic, meta-poetic and often very funny exploration of politics, ageing, current affairs, fear, travel, human weaknesses, technology and much more. This is powerful poetry that cuts with razor sharpness through modern pretensions and the clichés we surround ourselves.’ — Magdalena Ball (poet, author, critic, editor of compulsivereader.com)

‘Walker’s Original Clichés is a sample bag of poems which twist and turn, probing themselves, and the world, from odd and ingenious angles. He relishes word play and the play of ideas it spawns, one wry eye trained inward while the other peers archly out onto an almost speculative world where what looks like chance could well be synchronicity. ‘— Michele Seminara (poet, critic and managing editor of Verity La creative arts journal)

‘Rob Walker journeys through the world of the cliché — those that we speak, and those that we live — and shows us how the personal is political and the political personal. He travels around the world in search of cultural clichés and presents us with clichés of family, love, mental illness and even that old poetic stand-by, the moon. These eminently readable poems delight you, amuse and inspire us to re-examine those things which we take for granted. You will never look at a mouse plague the same way!’ — Tracey Korsten (poet, actor, speaker, director, blogger at middleagedlove.com)