[11] The Sydney Powerhouse Museum commissioned Holland-Batt in 2025 to write an essay about the art of scrimshaw and the Australian whaler Alfred Evans.

In the opening poem, "Medusa", Holland-Batt gives us the striking image of the drifting mind, 'pure and poisonous', drawing in its shadow as the soul billows out.

Yet she animates these poems with the spirit of Perseus, courageously risking what is known for a language 'with a force that could break our lives'... Holland-Batt entwines the past into a rich and inventive lyricism of the present.

[citation needed] Holland-Batt's debut collection, Aria, was described as "most impressive and haunting" by The Sydney Morning Herald, and as a "knockout" by leading Australian poetry critic Martin Duwell.

[15] In The Canberra Times, critic Peter Pierce likened Holland-Batt's "energetic approach to imagery" to that of Sylvia Plath, and praised her awareness of the "twin reserves of myth and metaphor".

[16] The Hazards, Holland-Batt's second volume, was praised as "a virtuoso performance" by The Sydney Morning Herald,[17] and "an absolute gem of a collection overspilling with poems of compelling urgency and dazzling accomplishment" by The Australian.

[18] Writing in Australian Book Review, Cassandra Atherton commented on Holland-Batt's "stark and sumptuous lyricism" and described The Hazards as "a thrilling psycho-geographical evocation of physical and internal landscapes".

Poet Judith Beveridge, writing in The Australian, observed that the poems in The Jaguar "are intensely moving not only for their tragic content but because of the way in which the subject matter is explored through dramatic and metaphorical ingenuity.