Staying Whole While Falling Apart celebrates troubled all-rounder, Aaron Auslander, as he strives to find meaning and shape his identity in the midst of too many influences. Love and parenthood complicate matters, and Aaron has to find creative ways to rally and stay whole. Gering artfully combines surreally black humour, arresting imagery, and tenderness to take the reader on a grand tour of the human landscape. The narrative roves from apartheid South Africa to the beach suburbs of Sydney, from the orange cliffs of the Blue Mountains to Nazi Europe. In precise and vivid language, the poems deliver fresh takes on life, at once quirky and bittersweet.
James Gering, diarist, short story writer and poet, was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. He has lived in Australia for many decades. James was the Australian Society of Authors Emerging Poet of the Year, 2018, and his writing has been published in journals around the world. He teaches at The University of Sydney and lives in the pristine Blue Mountains. There he climbs the cliffs and explores the river canyons in search of Rilkes solitude, Chekhovs humility, and dreamscapes in general. James welcomes visitors at jamesgering.com
Staying Whole While Falling Apart is a playful yet serious exploration of loss and grief, of trying to find balance and stability amidst a giddying welter of experiences. Youll laugh and cry with Aaron Auslander, a kind of everyman, as he tries to make sense of the flux and tumble of his life. The poetry is sharp and it cuts right to the bone, exposing the vulnerabilities and the precarious provisos under which we all can live. This is a potent book animated by courage and finely-honed craft. Judith Beveridge, Australian Poet
In Staying Whole While Falling Apart, a cycle of poems documenting the finest failures of one Aaron Auslander (foodie, divorcee, outdoorsman, self-analysing, self-medicating, dysfunctional dreamer), Gering has orchestrated a wry, deadpan fanfare for the common man. The result is by turns ruthlessly unsentimental and grimly funny, and as a whole, oddly moving. In searching for a comparison, the best I could come up with is Ted Hughes Crow. But where Crow is bleak and dismal, Gerings anti-hero poems reach quixotically for the glowing heights of redemption. Peter Selgin, author of The Inventors and Duplicity
