Dark Diamond Dancing

Dark Diamond Dancing’. . . Fire and Ice. . . these poems are strung with platinum prose and crafted with the author’s ‘mosaic of encounter’ with the natural world, with the Aboriginal people he works with, and the faith that keeps him ever questioning. It’s a journey generating from his home near the vast semi-desert emptiness of inland Australia and it takes us emotionally from Cape Disappointment to the Cape of Good Hope, through trauma and bipolar disorder, to resolution through love and grace. James Cornell’s world is ‘charged with the grandeur of God’, in Hopkins’ words, but he also addresses the themes of sin, depression and redemption, and explores the unique nature of the human person – ‘the archetypal artwork’ – with its ability to generate self through a myriad of thoughts and feelings. . . and that extra gift, the spirituality in our lives. For ‘no man is an island’; each person is a tessera in a timeless mosaic, a murmur in a song line.