Paul Mitchell, High Spirits. Puncher & Wattmann, 2024.
In an era when poetry often retreats into obscurity or dissolves into mere confession, Paul Mitchell‘s High Spirits offers something refreshingly different. Reviewed by Jason Goroncy in TEXT Journal, this collection demonstrates how poetry can be both deeply personal and universally resonant, spiritually grounded yet artistically sophisticated.
Mitchell’s work achieves a delicate balance where the spiritual illuminates the mundane without overwhelming it, where the sacred emerges from careful attention to the world as it is. His poems capture the texture of daily life – family dynamics, the rituals of domestic existence, even conversations about Bunnings that blend seamlessly with apocalyptic imagery – while extending beyond the personal to encompass broader cultural and environmental concerns.
One thing that distinguishes this collection is Mitchell’s conversational tone that feels like overheard conversations with a particularly thoughtful friend – accessible without being casual, profound without being pretentious. Whether satirising Australian suburban masculinity in ‘Weekend Warriors of the Apocalypse’ or writing an epistolary meditation to Franz Kafka, Mitchell demonstrates remarkable range and wit.
The collection’s fundamental conviction is that the world is enough – not through complacency, but through hard-won wisdom. Mitchell’s terrific humour never cheapens the gravity of human experience but illuminates it from unexpected angles, finding epiphanies of grace amid chaos.
In a cultural moment characterized by cynicism and fragmentation, High Spirits suggests that careful attention to the ordinary might reveal it to be, if not perfect, then sufficient – and perhaps, in its sufficiency, sacred.
Read the full review here.
Art/s and Theology Australia 