Michael Thwaites UNFINISHED JOURNEY : COLLECTED POEMS 1932-2004 Ginninderra 1 74027 249 8 Reviewed by Philip Harvey in the Australian Book Review, early 2005 Gentlemen also write poems. Michael Thwaites is resolutely old school: set subjects, square metrics, good manners. He is a quiet achiever. Even his voice is quiet, though not so quiet that you can’t hear it. Solid statements, with a minimum of flourish or divertimenti, are his rule. The book is divided into five chronological sections, so you can follow the story of a life lived. ‘Milton Blind’, an earnest construction, wins the Newdigate Prize for 1938. There is his wartime classic, ‘The Jervis Bay’, the narration of a 1940 sea battle in the North Atlantic that borrows from British imperial action verse while interleaving Murrayesque graphics: From the smoke floats are flowing Streams of velvet solid smoke drifting over the ocean swell, But the en...