Rod Usher's third collection, Convent Mermaid, is full of wit and sadness, love and loss.<br/><br/>Many of the poems spring from his long experience as a journalist, novelist and from years of living and working in Europe.<br/><br/>As Les Murray has written, Rod´s poetry inspires both tears and laughter. He's equally at home in poetic conversation with Emily Dickinson, David Bowie and Federico Garcia Lorca, in revisiting Cro - Magnon Man, or portraying the to - and - fro of love and sex.<br/><br/>His poems find their feet in Australia, Spain, England and the U.S., their rhyme typically embedded rather than obligatory, though he bows to the tight rules of haiku.