'Considering Holland-Batt’s technical nuance (her unpredictable harmonics, intense wordplay, neologisms, synesthetic sensual registries, double analogies), her book’s resonant emotional force, and its insistent internationality, what is there to say about The Jaguar that doesn’t begin with “extraordinary".' – Forrest Gander

‘The Jaguar is a tour de force. It will leave you dazzled and devastated. The wisdom, kindness and musical rigour of these poems is everywhere apparent. Their emotional range is considerable: intimate, sorrowing, celebratory and philosophical by turn. Holland-Batt possesses a mighty and singular talent, showcased here in all its glory.’ – Michelle de Kretser

‘A remarkable sequence about the death of the author’s father from Parkinson’s Disease: tender, memorable poems that capture grief and loss and love through unforgettable imagery, often blended with humour… Lyrical and wise, this is a book from a poet at the height of her powers.’ – 2023 Stella Prize citation

‘In The Jaguar, Sarah Holland-Batt writes about death as tenderly as we’ve ever read about birth… This is a book that cuts through to the core of what it means to descend into frailty, old age, and death. It unflinchingly observes the complex emotions of caring for loved ones, contending with our own mortality and above all – continuing to live.’ – Alice Pung, OAM

'The UK debut of a stand-out Australian poet of her generation, The Jaguar: Selected Poems by Sarah Holland-Batt presents a generous selection from three collections [...] this poet's world is in ultra-high definition.' – Jaya Savige, The Times Literary Supplement

'Holland-Batt’s lines are not only packed with sensory impressions, but also alive with imagery and musicality. Many poems are built of multiple accumulations of metaphor, but some, especially in the works drawn from her third collection The Jaguar, use extended metaphors. What marks her out as a distinctive and major voice is the presence of Lorca’s duende – the dark power felt in many of the elegies for her father. The use of startling images here makes them unforgettable.' – Pascale Petit, The Poetry Review, on The Jaguar: Selected Poems

‘Sarah Holland-Batt’s The Jaguar: Selected Poems is a very substantial volume bringing together work from her three collections published in Australia. Its sumptuous production chimes happily with the style of her writing: culturally sophisticated and highly intelligent as she clearly is, it’s above all the seemingly effortless sensuous evocativeness of her work that makes an impression from the beginning. […] an enjoyable and richly rewarding book.' – Edmund Prestwich, The High Window

'Weaving themes of loss, memory, and transformation, Holland-Batt stuns in this powerful volume that draws from her previous collections.' – Publishers Weekly, on The Jaguar: Selected Poems 

Sarah Holland-Batt is an award-winning Australian poet, editor and critic. Born in Queensland in 1982, she grew up in Australia and the United States, and has also lived in Italy and Japan. She has an MFA in Poetry from New York University, where she was the W.G. Walker Memorial Fulbright Scholar from 2010-2011. She has received many honours and fellowships including from Yaddo and MacDowell. She is Professor of Creative Writing and Literary Studies at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane. Her first book, Aria, received several literary prizes, including the Anne Elder Award, the Arts ACT Judith Wright Prize and the Thomas Shapcott Prize. Her second book, The Hazards, won the 2016 Prime Minister's Literary Award for Poetry. Her third book, The Jaguar, won the 2023 Stella Prize, the Queensland Premier’s Award for State Significance and the Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award, and was named The Australian newspaper’s 2022 Book of the Year. The Jaguar was also longlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and the ALS Gold Medal, and shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Prize.

from ARIA (2008)

I
    19     Pocket Mirror
    20     Shore Acres
    21     Francesca in the Second Circle
    22     Ruined Estates
    23     The Woodpile
    25     Cavendish Road
    26     Rock Roses
    27     Atonement
    28     Tracery
    29     January: An Air
    31     Late Aspect
    32     Circles and Centres
    34     Meditation on the Plums I
    35     Elégie

II
    36     Misery and Pizzicato
    37     Letter to Robert Lowell
    39     Exhaustion
    40     Two Kinds of Stubbornness
    41     The Sewing Room
    42     Mythos
    43     Materials
    44     Athenian Jar
    45     The Crow
    46     Un bel dì, vedremo
    48     Not a Life, But Like One

III
    49     Remedios the Beauty
    51     Stormclouds over Mexico
    52     Letter from K
    53     Laughter and Forgetting
    54     Aria for a Painted Dancer
    56     The Idea of Mountain
    57     A Good Marriage
    58     The Fires
    60     Salem Song
    61     The Art of Disappearing

    63     Notes


from THE HAZARDS (2015)

I
    69     Medusa
    70     This Landscape Before Me
    72     The Orchid House
    74     Tropic Rain
    75     Botany
    76     A Scrap of Lace
    78     An Illustrated History of Settlement
    80     The House on Stilts
    82     Galah’s Skull
    83     Desert Pea
    84     Approaching Paradise

II
    86     The Vulture
    88     Essay on the Toucan
    89     The Capuchin
    91     The Macaw
    93     Life Cycle of the Eel
    94     Orange-bellied Parrot
    96     Green Ant Tarantella
    97     Three Sketches of a Favourite Cat
    98     Possum
    99     A Crab Tide

III
    100     Of Germany
    101     Late Hammershøi
    103     Collioure/Love Poem
    104     Beauty Is a Ticket of Admission to All Spectacles
    105     Primavera: The Graces
    106     The Quattrocento as a Waltz
    107     Interbellum
    109     Rain, Ravello
    110     Embouchure
    112     Against Ingres
    114     Liebesträume
    115     Umbrian Sketch
    116     Reclining Nude
    118     Goya’s Dog
    119     The Flowers on His Bedside Speak of Eternity
    120     No End to Images

IV
    121     Insurgency
    122     Night Sonnet
    123     Impressions of April
    124     Morningside Spring
    125     Mercado
    126     Garden Apartment, Taube
    127     Via dell’Amore
    128     The Atlantic
    130     O California
    131     The Invention of Ether
    133     Last Goodbyes in Havana
    134     Ensign
    135     The Hazards

    137     Notes


from THE JAGUAR (2022)

I
    143     My Father as a Giant Koi
    144     The Gift
    146     The Parachute
    147     Brazil
    148     Empires of Mind
    150     The Gurney
    152     Time Remaining
    154     Lime Jelly
    156     The Kindest Thing
    157     Terminal Lucidity
    158     Nessun Dorma
    160     The Outing
    162     The Clearing
    164     At Springbrook

II
    166     Thalassography
    168     Light Years
    170     Pikes Peak
    172     Substantia Nigra
    173     The Midpoint
    175     Tijuana
    177     Kneeling Figure
    179     The Jaguar
    181     The Odds
    182     The Grip
    184     Neurostimulator
    186     The Night Shift
    188     Maidenhair
    190     Vital Signs

III
    192     Instructions for a Lover
    193     Epithalamium
    195     Classical Allegory
    196     Affidavit
    197     Parable of the Clubhouse
    198     Cipriani
    200     On Tiepolo’s Cleopatra
    201     Ode to Cartier
    203     Alaska
    205     The Proposal
    207     The Worst of It
    208     Blue Quandong
    210     Serious Moonlight

IV
    212     Driving Through Drystone Country
    214     Gin & Tonic at the Rock Hotel
    215     Lago Nicaraguense
    216     Quetzalcoatl
    218     Sketches from the Nile
    220     Meditation on Risk in New Hampshire
    222     Upon Viewing a Still Life by Chardin and Thinking of the Marathon Bombing in Boston
    224     Monopoli
    225     On Worthing Beach
    228     Great North Road
    231     Mediterranean Steps
    233     In My Father’s Country
    233         I  The Burr
    234         II  Your Dying
    236         III  The Hex
    237         IV  Long Division
    238         V  Antipodes
    239         VI  Anti-Gravity
    240         VII  A Brief History of the British Raj
    241         VIII  Brain Surgery
    242         IX  The Tremor
    243         X  Indirect Address
    244         XI  Winter, Worthing

    247     Notes

    251     Thanks

    255     Biographical note