Tric O'Heare
POET WRITER TEACHER
G & S Ghazals and Sonnets in Conversation
(WALLEAH PRESS, 2025)
COMMENTS ON G & S GHAZALS AND SONNETS IN CONVERSATION
‘Poetry is sometimes seen as a solitary business – but for centuries poets have been defying this notion by collaborating with each other – think of the renga tradition in Japan.
Ross Donlon and Tric O’Heare have invented a unique new collaboration – a ghazal from him, a sonnet from her, responding to each other. The connections are sometimes clear from subject, image or word association, sometimes quite lateral. The result is a wide-ranging, dual-voiced collection of terrific poems in the chosen forms.’-Mike Ladd
‘Two authors, two poetic forms, a necklace of free association: this is an innovative concept for a new collection of poems in which two people’s memories correspond and bounce off one another, poem by poem, so that the whole becomes a richly imagined chain of response.’-Sarah Day
Like a Girl on a Page
(MARK TIME BOOKS, 2024)
COMMENTS ON LIKE A GIRL ON A PAGE
‘Like a Girl on a Page should be read- it’s not just important work but beautiful. The tender, thoughtful, vulnerable strong atmosphere of the poems will stay with me for a long time.’-Andy Jackson
Marrow
(MARK TIME BOOKS, 2021)
COMMENTS ON MARROW
Tric O’Heare’s candidly taut poems reach inside the bones of poetry to the marrow, to what matters in contemporary life: relationships, ideas, compassion, memory-making, our animal companions—all observed with an inherited Irish sensibility for truth and wit. She is a marvellous multiskilled formalist and Marrow is rich with autumnal fruit, new poem species and, above all, generosity.-Jennifer Harrison
Embedding these poems with intimacy into Australian nature and landscape, sweeping through her familial generations within the rub of Catholic childhood, Tric O’Heare gives us hardy and difficult, loving and sad truths without polemic or moralism. Crafted meticulously, here is gold in the bones; the essential marrow. Original images strike into ‘a kiln of backyard sun’. Unfurling the past into the present like her red umbrella opening, final lines always swerve towards the depths. ‘The view is just straight ahead but the signposts all/ point inward.’-Robyn Rowland
Embedding these poems with intimacy into Australian nature and landscape, sweeping through her familial generations within the rub of Catholic childhood, Tric O’Heare gives us hardy and difficult, loving and sad truths without polemic or moralism. Crafted meticulously, here is gold in the bones; the essential marrow. Original images strike into ‘a kiln of backyard sun’. Unfurling the past into the present like her red umbrella opening, final lines always swerve towards the depths. ‘The view is just straight ahead but the signposts all/ point inward.’-Robyn Rowland
Fear of Umbrellas
(MARK TIME BOOKS, 2013)
COMMENTS ON FEAR OF UMBRELLAS
Tric O'Heare's unique voice and poetic slant is beautifully captured in the chapbook Fear of Umbrellas. The title says it all.
-Ross Donlon
Tender Hammers
(Five Islands Press, 2003)
COMMENTS ON TENDER HAMMERS
In Tender Hammers, Tric O’Heare’s interest in religion as philosophy and way of life is often contrasted with the more explicable certainties of scientific principles. Hers is not the view of the faithful, but of a respectful, curious and nostalgic sceptic. Her metaphors are utterly unexpected and fire the poems with an original, intelligent light. Her first poem, Madonna of the Dry Country powerfully describes an ‘innocent’ Christian Madonna statue stranded in the Australian landscape:“She tells herself she has perfect balance/The world’s a chipped beach ball/ still under her gripping marble feet…When the faithful come, she sees/her ancient son hologrammed in their eyes/ One minute baby, the next a corpse…”. O’Heare creates a fine balance between a modern Australia and the Irish Catholicism she has inherited. -Gig Ryan Reference: see Oliver Dennis’s comments on Tender Hammers within his Australian Book Review of the New Poets Nine Series at Master copy 255 October (flinders.edu.au) Pages 56-57, 2003
In Tender Hammers, Tric O’Heare’s interest in religion as philosophy and way of life is often contrasted with the more explicable certainties of scientific principles. Hers is not the view of the faithful, but of a respectful, curious and nostalgic sceptic. Her metaphors are utterly unexpected and fire the poems with an original, intelligent light. Her first poem, Madonna of the Dry Country powerfully describes an ‘innocent’ Christian Madonna statue stranded in the Australian landscape:“She tells herself she has perfect balance/The world’s a chipped beach ball/ still under her gripping marble feet…When the faithful come, she sees/her ancient son hologrammed in their eyes/ One minute baby, the next a corpse…”. O’Heare creates a fine balance between a modern Australia and the Irish Catholicism she has inherited. -Gig Ryan Reference: see Oliver Dennis’s comments on Tender Hammers within his Australian Book Review of the New Poets Nine Series at Master copy 255 October (flinders.edu.au) Pages 56-57, 2003
Kickstart Poetry 1
Tric O'Heare and Ross Donlon (Blake Education, 2007)
Written by Australian poets Tric O’Heare and Ross Donlon, this text provides guidelines, prompts and models designed to help junior secondary students get started on writing their own poetry. Every lesson has been trialled in classrooms, and examples of students’ work are included alongside those of established poets. The self-contained nature of each of the units of work helps build confidence in teachers unfamiliar with teaching poetry.
Kickstart Poetry 2
Tric O'Heare and Ross Donlon (Blake Education, 2007)
Kickstart Poetry 2 continues and extends the successful format of its companion book, Kickstart Poetry 1 and like its companion has been very successfully used locally and internationally, in the middle to senior secondary years as well as in adult learning contexts.