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About the author
MIKE LIEBOWITZ’s relationship with poetry goes back to his schooldays in South Africa, where an old-fashioned education included making him commit many poems to memory. This reluctantly acquired knowledge turned out to be a boon: the great poets of the past have been the steadfast travelling companions of this two-time émigré and continue to inform and inhabit his vision of language and the world.
For many years Mike wrote little poetry, and then always in times of tumult, when the comfortable furniture of his mind was being rearranged. But during COVID he took a long sabbatical and this freed up the poetic impulse. The result was his first book of poetry: Looking In, published by Sydney Jewish Museum press. Wardrobe of Secrets is Mike’s second book.
About the book
WARDROBE OF SECRETS covers a vast terrain. These poems come from every corner of a rich inner life: from moments of tenderness, and moments of irritation; from snippets of an overheard conversation; from random shards of words; from passages—read or misread—from the works of other authors; and especially from phrases that float into the crepuscular borderlands between sleep and wakefulness.
Some poems are responses to recent events; others have been brewing for decades. But while the subject matter is diverse, and the emotional tone varied, these poems are united by Mike Liebowitz’s probing and unceasingly curious mind; and by his scrupulous search for precision in describing what he sees and feels. The honesty and integrity of the observer is evident everywhere.