Guardians, Not Angels has an impressive statement in its title poem

‘for each of us there exists a mystic-scape drawn from fact’

which suggests the poles of Stephen Oliver’s range. He fronts onto facts - of Sydney, New Zealand, U.S.A, and Europe - as a contemporary wanderer and searcher. But his quest is mystical, lyrical and full of confident discourse.There is something spacy, pithy, philosophic in his writing. He has a Citizen of the World air whose work suggests a TransTasman literature is about to happen.

‘I found the book an invigorating, unsettling and sturdily rewarding experience. It led me to feel an extending of the boundaries of poetry in our time.’
James Tulip, Associate Professor, English Department, University of Sydney

‘His poems are resistant to casual enquiry but generous to those who persist.’
Tom Weston, The Press

"Oliver undermines the commonplace idea of reality governed by the tyranny of language."
Bill Direen - The New Zealand Listener