Let Their Voices Be Heard, editor Mac Nicoll, rrp $20.00
Review by Jim Tulip
Former Associate Professor of English at Sydney University
Let Their Voices Be Heard is a rich bringing together of poetry, prose and painting. It is also a gathering of old friends. Editor Mac Nicoll has drawn on a wide and rewarding circle of friends – mostly Victorian – to produce an anthology that has culture and wisdom and humanity spread out in a way that only Melbourne (and to a lesser extent Australia) can supply. Best of all, it has a friendliness that includes the reader.
Surprisingly, it is the painters whose voices are loudest heard. Modern printing reproduces their colours brilliantly. From Ray Averill’s ‘Christmas began in a Shed’ to Neville Edwards almost allegorical studies of Lake Eyre and the Victorian ‘Black Saturday’, there is a celebration of Australian experience being offered at a high level of art and spirituality. At this level Margaret Nicoll must be everyone’s favourite. Her Melbourne studies (also available as postcards) show finesse and a lifetime of coming to terms with the grace and beauty of the world round about her. Her more abstract painting ‘Radiance’ is remarkable.
There are several leaders in Australian spirituality among Mac Nicoll’s friends. Robin Pryor, Julie Perrin, Sandy Yule, Rodney Horsfield, Gail Prichard, Ross Kingham and Digby Hannah are names widely known across the nation. They offer personal statements of insight and experience in their poems. Pryor’s ‘Wybalenna wound, Flinders Island’, seeing this locality as an Australian ‘killing field’ is striking. Horsfield’s suburban train journeys yield sharp critical responses that are at the same time tested as blessings. Sandy Yule’s ‘Metaphysical foundations’ is just what it says it is, but well caught in flowing eloquent, almost lyrical, lines appropriate to a rich mind. Ross Kingham’s ‘Unknowing’ introduces a welcome note of uncertainty, the soul in a contest with certainties.
I admired Jennifer Meyer’s ‘I see a bend in the road and I don’t like it’, a poignant elegy in transit. Gail Pritchard ‘Mysterious? Well read on’ highlights the way prose meditation and reveries rise to a poetic level where truths can be expressed naturally, as if in conversation. Clare Boyd-Macrae also grounds her imagination in prose-like, almost confessional, sharings with the reader. As does Cheryl Lawrie in ‘On Christmas Day’ where her sympathies flow in ways different from the hard-edged lines of her other poems.
There are a dozen other poets to sample and enjoy in Let Their Voices Be Heard. It is a good mix from Mac Nicoll’s friends. He must have a special charm to draw them together in this surprising anthology, artists and writers in love with life and with imaginations warmed by the Holy Spirit in their native land.
TO PURCHASE: Phone Ross Kingham 0418 481 562
The May 2012 issue of Canberra Region Presbytery News, 
On Friday, March 16, 2012, I was very honored and happy to be present to see my cousin Jean Shannon commissioned as the Presbytery Hospital Chaplaincy Leader. Jean’s commissioning took place at St. James’ Uniting Church in Curtin, and was presided over by Rev. Alistair Christie. While Jean’s path has brought her to a loving and supportive congregation in the Uniting Church, mine has taken me to the “cousin church,” the American United Church of Christ, Congregational.
In a