When Adelaide poet, writer and broadcaster Mike Ladd sat down to select poems for Now-Then: New and Selected Poems , a book spanning his debut in 1984 to new work shaped by grief and climate emergency, he was struck not only by the variety of styles and influences, but also by the threads of sound, place, memory and voice that bind them together.

“I had a couple of reader friends who handed me lists of poems they wanted included,” he tells InReview of the book’s selection process. “I did consult, because your taste varies a lot; one week you love a poem, and the next you’ve gone off it.”

The result is a lean selection that both reflects Ladd’s changing phases and highlights his enduring preoccupations.

“I kept asking myself, do I have a style? Looking back, I think I can recognise t

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