Introduction: Paolo Totaro's thirteen years of afterthoughts

A critical introduction to 'Tide of Tides: Poems 2011-2024,' a major new collection of poems by Italian-Australian author Paolo Totaro. The introduction explains the extraordinary circumstances of the book's production, as Totaro (now aged 92) has written as much in the thirteen years between 2011 and 2024 as he did in the sixty years between 1950 and 2011, when his 'Collected Poems' were published. The introduction charts the new directions Totaro has taken as a writer in this remarkable 'late' addition to his work. The introduction explains how Totaro has turned away from his major theme of migration to consider instead the permanence of an adopted home, and to probe - nervously, but also in a spirit of curiosity and exploration - the strange and unlooked-for territory of very old age, and what may lie beyond even that. The introduction characterises this book as an preciously rare and surprising contribution to Australian literature, representing an experience and a territory that hardly any Australian authors (let alone migrant authors) have ever reached.