Eight books: fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction.

"Read this book for its laconic wisdom and for the eerie insights of a poem such as 'Dead People I Know'."

"Paul peers deeply into the cosmic comedy and weaves poetry of humour and compassion from all its colours."

"It's calming and heartening to watch a father quietly sift his daily life for what is sacred."

"A treasure chest of wisdom and experience."

"Mitchell's writing is challenging, exhilarating and touched with a deep sense of humanity."

"Mitchell is a terse and observant writer, as alive to the particulars of Aussie idiom and experience as Tim Winton, but less showy . . . It's hard to write about the thwarts and flaws of conventional masculinity without coming across as either too harsh or too sentimental. Mitchell succeeds in doing so."

"Mitchell is by turns colloquial and mystical and often both . . . Mitchell's work is generous and never lets his poet-speaker off too lightly."

"Paul Mitchell's new book has a cleanness of line and a generosity of vision. When reading through Standard Variation Neruda's expression 'fully empowered' comes to mind."

"Paul Mitchell is working in the territory inhabited by artists as diverse as Tim Winton, Raymond Carver and Bruce Springsteen . . . Mitchell is interested in the powerless, the inarticulate and the struggling — people who don't really understand how their lives could have turned out this way and don't quite know how to talk about it."

"Mitchell's style is astonishingly authoritative, and he shows flashes of genius as he tries to articulate the almost inexpressible on behalf of characters whose voices we don't often hear."

"There is something edgy and explosive about these poems, and about the process of reading them . . . sharply satirical and funny."

"Mitchell's project is extra-political, seeking to engage the world through a spirituality that may, or may not, be conventionally religious . . . a poetry of approaches rather than the predetermined."

"If poems were nails I would want Paul Mitchell to build my house."

"Like [Bruce] Dawe, Mitchell finds beauty in the most seemingly mundane subjects."