New book
Ruth Newmarch, Archbishop Philip Freier, Adrian Lane and Peter Adam at the launch of Southpaw by Adrian Lane. Photo Ridley Melbourne
A Matter of Reversal
Southpaw is a new book by Adrian Lane
People often believe that Christians are detached from real life, blinded by our faith from the genuine experience of ordinary Australians.
This criticism applies even more to those who work for the church, and more again to those who are not practising in ministry, but teaching and studying.
Adrian Lane, Lecturer in Preaching and Pastoral Care at Ridley Melbourne, has written a book that will explode these myths. Southpaw brings together a collection of poetry that expresses Adrian’s honest reflections over the years on the joys and pain of life, of his love for the people he has known, and his faith in Jesus which transforms his view of the world.
The term ‘southpaw’ is a reference to a left-handed boxer, and in the opening poem, ‘Left-handers’, he sets the tone for the book with a meditation on the way that being a leftie marks one as different and complex, out of step with a right-handed world.
There are celebrations of Australian life and countryside, political commentary, laments of loneliness and missed opportunities, and poems for children.
Southpaw ends with a series of meditations on Christ and the Christian hope, and closes with ‘Brokenback’, in which the bones of a dinosaur in rural NSW wait for the resurrection from the dead.
Jane Prentice, a student at Ridley, commented on reading Southpaw:
‘It connects at deep levels with the joys and struggles of living…each poem was an encounter... perhaps with an idea I know only too well, or with a fresh concept…what a gift Adrian is—putting to words that which is hard to articulate!’
Southpaw was launched on 26 March in the Ridley Dining Hall by the Revd Dr Philip Freier, Archbishop of Melbourne.
Southpaw by Adrian Lane, published by Ginninderra Press 2009