The Lovemakers is the crowning achievement of a career that has been stubbornly original in the poetic forms that it employs, supple in language, astringent in thought. [Peter Pierce The Bulletin]

…The Lovemakers reclaims a space for a distinctly narrative poetic, able and willing to grapple at length with contemporary issues and morality. All that remains to complete this poet's arduous journey is the embrace of Australian readers. Switch off your televisions for a moment, people. [Mark Svendsen The Courier Mail]

But The Lovemakers isn't just about overdoing it: it performs overdoing it. Wearne's aesthetic is one of excess, of conspicuous idiosyncrasy. Part of its excessiveness and oddity is its oxymoronic status. Wearne's books are simultaneously poetic and prosy, realistic and outré, stylistically heterogeneous and tonally homogenous. [David McCooey Australian Book Review]