Janet Sutherland

"Janet Sutherland prefers a pared-back, uncluttered, free verse for the poems in Hangman’s Acre. The understated tones and hewn forms create a careful performance ..... she is a gifted and observant nature writer .....There are many delicacies in such an approach: deftness of image, delays of space. Elizabeth Bishop’s attentiveness of voice hangs over this whole collection but the influence is one of tone. I can’t help but admire the fact that this poet can yield such music, movement and scent from a rebounding flowerhead and a slowed-down spondee-sprung myrtle."
(David Morley in Poetry Review Volume 100:1 Spring 2010)

"With her rigorous commitment to absolute clarity and precision, Janet Sutherland's poems are pared to the bone, visionary, untainted by sentiment but always fully compassionate - suffused with a quiet, deeply felt spirituality. She never shirks the poet's obligation to describe what she sees and to explore the realities of rural life and death. She is sureley one of our most accomplished nature poets, and we should cherish her courage and her gifts"
(Catherine Smith)

"Brief, eloquent lines speak of a personal world of growing things, gardens, women, love, endurance. Her poems are questioning, tender, guarded"
(Judith Kazantsis in Poetry Review)