‘What might a doctor say when he turns to poetry, or, more interesting, what kind of a doctor might a poet make? Warwick Anderson, who notes ‘twenty trees plugged into dark red dirt and yellow grass between me and her’ in a small town by the sea, who notices that ‘her grey hands held onto the steering wheel like begging white paws’, or who tries to find the life a woman lived in the few notes he has in a medical file for her, cuts straight when he slices his visions into poems. His eye is as direct as William Carlos Williams’, his tongue as sharp as Peter Goldsworthy’s. There are old cars, tiny houses, streets and bars in these poems, stale summer evenings, and young women. I know those places, I knew some of those women! - it’s a poetry of feelings we enter into here, and we see we’re there with the rest of humanity. The poems talk intimately without trying to talk knowingly. There is no protection here for doctor or patient. It is not surprising that a poet’s noisy emphysema is ‘more desperately meant and deeply felt’ than any other poem delivered at a reading, and when Warwick Anderson brings this to our attention, there’s that pleasure of knowing the poet, savouring the language, and recognising the experience. This is the kind of doctor I want to go to and listen to and read repeatedly.’ - Kevin Brophy
978 1 74027 659 7, 82pp, $22.00

'These delicious poems, crammed with dailiness, establish Andrews as a powerful voice.' - Chris Wallace-Crabbe
'...a collection of solid virtue...' - Canberra Times
Indigo
1 74027 137 8, 86pp, $18.00

‘Everyone has a button story, but plunging into this collection of button poems is full of surprises; amazing fictions lie scattered amongst poignant memories and the everyday made strange. Far from being buttoned-up, these poems reveal life in all its guises: familiar, heartbreaking, erotic, funny, enigmatic… Whatever did happen to Bob Ellis’s top button?’ - Kay Lawrence
978 1 74027 733 4, 74pp, $20.00

'These poems are elegant as a kimono. Indeed, at times they feel slightly Japanese - gentle, beautiful, graceful and flowing.' - Kate Llewellyn
1 74027 344 3, 74 pages, $18.00

Taking us across culture and landscapes and evoking other states, Derek Baines’s new collection touches raw nerves and brings humour to some of our most challenging experiences. A lone traveller enjoys hospitality at an ancient Japanese inn, an insomniac artist produces a masterwork from his subconscious, and a marathon runner moves out of his own body. A Most Urgent Task is a compelling story in verse of how we are living and dreaming today.
978 1 74027 727 6, 70pp, $18.50

'The poems in The Journey to Here are wise and often whimsical; some are dark as obsidian, others crystal clear with the joy of life. Jo Baker is a born storyteller, a lover of language and a strong woman who's not afraid to confront and write about life's challenges. Baker combines rich details, sharp observations and a wild imagination with rhythm and rhyme in this memorable collection of poems.' - Jude Aquilina
'Joanne Baker's life changed dramatically after a car accident deprived her of her mobility. However, the enforced leisure allowed her to give voice to her experiences; this is the voice she has allowed us to hear in The Journey to Here. This, her first book of poetry, is the story of her journey through life: through the dark times, the lighter times, until the present. Her struggles and observations have enabled her to become more assured in her approach to living, to find the "lighter" side of her present times. Many readers will identify with the insights and decisions made on each stage of her journey. This may be Joanne's first collection; I doubt it will be her last.' - Maureen Mitson
'A collection of poems with something for everyone - witty, warm and wise.' - Sharon Kernot
'With a blend of seriousness, humour and grace, Joanne Baker chronicles her life's experiences, challenges and triumphs. Her poetry gives voice to her emotions and observations, and reveals her life's journey through dark times and light.' - Connie Burg
978 1 74027 808 9, 76pp, $18.50

Damian Balassone’s poems have appeared in a vast array of Australian and international publications and have been praised for their ability to merge traditional forms with modern content. Of the twenty-three poems included here, all have previously been published, with the exception of the title piece ‘Daniel Yammacoona’, a sweeping narrative poem with a desert setting, fused with themes of family, country, football and other contemporary issues that touch the human spirit.
978 1 74027 787 7, 58pp, $20.00

‘So much of life is experienced through the attention Elaine Barker gives to shoes in this admirable, absorbing collection. Shoes measure roads taken, carry memories, arouse speculation, record other worlds and histories. Their ordinariness takes on the infinite variety of humanity in the hands of a poet whose supple idiom of the “oddly angled”, surprising observation yields to deeper meditations on change, time and dream. What Gauguin’s shoes evoke for the poet is true of her own art with its “brief tender lines” and “sharp precision”. These shoes step out of the wardrobe, the photo album or the museum with the rhythm, balance and agility of dancing feet: “heel, toe, heel, toe, / as affirming as a heartbeat”.’ - Nicholas Jose
‘The lowly shoe, one of the great motifs of the twentieth century, is transformed into a powerful conceit beneath the pen of Elaine Barker. These poems are superb miniature meditations on memory. The shoe is, after all, what we often stare at, but neglect to read: the ebb and flow of time and the anxiety it generates.’ - Brian Castro
978 1 74027 708 2, 64pp, $22.00

In this diverse collection of poems, Ron Barton explores the various aspects of his world that make him who he is. Regardless of the seriousness of tone, which is often tongue-in-cheek, each poem contains some element of his life - whether it be a reaction to childhood and fatherhood, or a reflection of his love of teaching and football. If God is a Poet encourages readers to question their values regarding Australian identity and gender roles without aggressively promoting a specific agenda. Here we see the professional writer experimenting with form, imagery and theme while remaining highly accessible and readable.
978 1 74027 792 1, 76pp, $18.50

Stefanie Bennett has published eighteen books of poetry. Over 39 years she has acted as a publishing editor, tutored in The Institute of Modern Languages at James Cook University and worked with Arts Action for Peace. Of mixed ancestry (Italian/Irish/German/Paugussett-Shawnee), she was born in Townsville, North Queensland, Australia.
‘Ms Bennett is perhaps one of the least-recognised important poets of the new wave.’ - Thomas Shapcott, The Australian
‘Thank goodness somebody thinks poems are forever. You go back to Dickinson.’ - Judith Wright, Blackfeather
‘Stefanie Bennett writes poetry with a capital P. Not for her the rueful ironies and domestic incidents that make up so much of her contemporaries’ work. She insists on a bardic voice, an unapologetic moral purpose and a communion with artists and true poets wherever and whenever they may be found.’ - Penelope Nelson, Quadrant
‘With everything about her the maverick her most recent book - The Hermit in Translation - executes a deep bow to tradition. Here Bennett’s own voice is found at liberty, possibly too a note of Dorothy Auchterlonie’s principled humanity. This is a daring leap, an original brew, both pious and innovative.’ - Judith Rodriguez, Hobo
‘Beyond Bennett’s undoubted technical skills is the quality which elevates her to the top rank of Australian poets. It is the way she effortlessly (well, apparently effortlessly - ars celare artis) enmeshes language and land, showing both to have value way beyond their capacity for exploitation, showing how both are inextricable aspects of humanity and human survival. In this, Symphony for Heart and Stone ranks with Chris Mansell’s Mortifications and Lies, Peter Minter’s Blue Grass and John Kinsella’s The New Arcadia as a fine example of a kind of 21st century poetry that is not only relevant but essential in a world, and especially a nation, where language, land and humanity are consistently being abused.’ - Tim Thorne, Famous Reporter
978 1 74027 702 0, 64pp, $18.50

‘John Blackhawk’s poems are so sophisticated in their reflections of his own and others’ experience...there’s life and death experiences in several countries...there’s religious, marital, parental and philanthropic love. They are lively and mature accounts of experience readers can relate to. John Blackhawk is an original talent.’ - Michael Sharkey
‘There’s a real richness, a clear eye, an enviable connection with nature, a fresh way with words, maturity, self knowledge...all great stuff.’ - Lauren Williams
‘I like the tone and voice, the relationship established between self, world, poem and reader.’ - Brook Emery
‘Sensual, spiritual, thrilling and funny... Against the Currents is a widescreen cornucopia of fizzing words and restless ideas all brought to the page by a writer with a deft touch and a rare power that makes it clear he has lived at least a version of every moment described (and more).’ - Adam Gibson
‘John Blackhawk’s poems move me with their gentle surprises, sensuous quality, wit and sharp observation. These are poems of the senses, poems of other worlds and poems of the everyday. The reader can’t help but fall into them.’ - Sarah Attfield
978 1 74027 643 6, 74pp, $18.50

‘One word describes Avril Bradley’s latest collection of poetry, inter alia, and that is effervescent. Her collection sparkles with a myriad of images, a delight in the immense variety of the English language, an extravagance of word play and, underneath it all, the real riches of the most human of themes in literature.’ - Garth Madsen
Avril Bradley is, among other things, a poet who lives in Frankston, Victoria, Australia. She has taught extensively in England and Australia from Kindergarten to Tertiary. In 2009 and 2010 she ran poetry workshops for Mentone Grammar School, year 6, culminating in two anthologies of students’ work, Westernport Whimsy and Shoreham Shorts. She has published two chapbooks, Poems from the Wilderness (2008) and a china shop in a bull (2010). inter alia is her first full-length collection.
‘…fresh, vibrant collection…’ - Poetry Matters
978 1 74027 749 5, 62pp, $18.00

A witty collection of wry reflections on the pleasures, the puzzles and the predicaments of contemporary life.
978 1 74027 390 9, 48pp, $17.50

Drifting on the tide of experience, this collection is a snapshot of the last five years of my life, in all its ebb and flow.
978 1 74027 746 4, 40pp, $17.50

‘Reading Hunter’s Place is a beautiful journey, an experiencing of sorts, the way life can be seen as a series of occurrences, interruptions, filled with the activity of the daily grind against a rural background filled with its own surprises and dramas. The diary form, the epistolary way it reflects with all attendant honesty a response to the world is definitely a welcome mode of address for poets and poetry readers alike. Whether it’s waking up in fog or mending fences, smelling the coffee or taking that trip up the dirt track into the closest town, every moment is captured with a startling precision. Indeed, the poet is careful and his considerations acknowledge and recognise this wonderful country we live in.’ - Richard Hillman
‘Brian’s poems have always been vigorously related to trying to comprehend the issues that are going on in contemporary societies and how you battle that and get on and make it work.’ - Syd Harrex
‘Brian Brock is the only poet I have met whose work I would describe as utterly of this world. That is why his poetry should be read.’ - Paul Depasquale
978 1 74027 785 3, 86pp, $20.00

Lorna Thrift Brooks was born in Beechworth in 1931. After living in the small community of Murmungee near Beechworth, she moved to Albury in 1940 for further education. In 1950 she married a returned serviceman, who became a soldier settler with a sheep and cattle property in western Victoria near Harrow. Her main career, as an artist, spans sixty years. She worked from home as a teacher of painting and pottery before moving to Macedon in Victoria, where she continues to work and exhibit. She has had many solo exhibitions and her work is in collections Australia-wide and overseas. She spent some time as artist in residence at Arthur Boyd’s property ‘Bundanon’ in New South Wales. In Lilies on the Tongue, her first collection of poetry, she has revisited her childhood to explore truths and fictions which dwell within it. It has been a journey with crossroads of dreams and fantasy. She plans to continue writing for as long as it’s possible for her to do so.
978 1 74027 791 4, 96pp, $22.00

After graduating from The University of Adelaide in the 1960s, Geoff Brougham spent over thirty years as an English teacher in secondary schools in South Australia, a career interspersed with a decade spent breeding and training racehorses, riding trackwork and being a part-time wool grower, cattleman and share cropper. His obvious attachment to poetry - the writing of it - arose in Brougham’s fifties after a year’s teaching in the isolated town of Peterborough in the state’s Mid-North. In this rugged environment with its extremes of temperature, he developed a finer understanding of the intricate interplay between man and Nature. Many of his poems explore this relationship and challenge the myth of human exceptionalism. Brougham cites John Keats and Seamus Heaney as his major poetic influences.
978 1 74027 698 6, 76pp, $18.50

A collection of poems about refugee character. The author has been a friend of the Karen people (from Burma) for several years. Their struggle for peace and freedom, rarely mentioned in the media, has been long and continues. Many Karen have been cruelly treated and displaced from their villages. Some have moved to border camps and others have recently resettled in Australia, the USA and other Western countries. These poems trace this journey, focusing on a people’s amazing inner strength, loyalty and rich culture in the face of oppression.
‘…a collection of poetry that is committed and compelling in its attention to detail and has the ability to engender compassion in any reader.’ - Zadok Perspectives
978 1 74027 709 9, 56pp, $20.00

'Dawn Bruce's sustained engagement with Japanese poetic genres informs her free verse too, imbuing it with spare elegance and a keen sense of the immediate. This is disciplined writing that prunes the extraneous and allows us to see the clear images upon which this poet bases her commentary on human experience. Dawn's love of and commitment to poetry is evident in every line.' - Beverley George
978 1 74027 476 0, 92pp, $20.00

A Man of Emails follows on from Michael Byrne's previous collection Southbound. Again, there is the balance between his painterly imagism and his quirky use of traditional form. With technical flair and flamboyancy, Byrne explores matters relating to his history, environment and psyche. Get to know A Man of Emails.
'There is manifest intelligence in Byrne's poetry and an emerging technical competence... Let us hope for more from him.' - Peter Pierce, The Canberra Times
'A Man of Emails is persuasively, even riskily autobiographical. There are things to be learned from it.' - Geoff Page
'There is both a disciplined control and a soaring transcendence in his craft.' - Bill Tully, Voice
978 1 74027 603 0, 38pp, $18.00

This selection of one hundred prose poems published in Australia since the 1970s demonstrates what a hip, bohemian and subversive vein the prose poem is. Prose poetry has proved a most flexible vehicle for an extraordinary range of Australian talent - from Gary Catalano to Joanne Burns, from Ania Walwicz to Alex Skovron. There have been overseas anthologies of prose poems but no Australian counterpart. The Indigo Book of Australian Prose Poems meets the needs of students, reviewers and the general literature loving public.
‘Reading this anthology will, happily, lead me back to my library and bookshop, hungry for more Australian prose poems.’ - Spineless Wonders website
Indigo
978 1 74027 650 4, 152pp, $25.00

‘Ashley Capes’ communication and exploration of the outer and inner worlds we inhabit is generous and inclusive, favouring sincerity over artifice and meaning over wordplay. Whether taking simple delight in the journey of a snail or grappling with the darker complexities of the human condition, the poetry is ultimately nourishing for its attentiveness.’ - Jane Williams
‘In between giants, Capes steps with a daring lightness. From ‘water-proofed buskers’ on the banks of the Yarra to standing ‘ankle-deep in pigeons’ in Piazza San Marco, Capes walks a breathtaking tightrope between geographical locations and everyday miracles. Direct, playful and startling, these poems are unafraid to dream.’ - Graham Nunn
Visit the online launch of between the giants.
978 1 74027 779 2, 64pp, $18.00

Jennifer Chrystie's poems have been published widely in Australia as well as in the UK and US. Her first collection, Polishing the Silver, was commended in the Fellowship of Australian Writers Anne Elder Award 2007.
'This is a thoughtful and diverse collection... Intensely observant and memorable...' - Lorraine McGuigan
978 1 74027 809 6, 82pp, $22.00

Harsh yet delicate, these poems echo the fragile beauty of the Australian country landscapes which form the background to the writer's lifetime. Ranging from young motherhood to her seventy-fifth year, this small selection captures in vivid imagery and precise language a range of personal, universal and contemporary issues as well as her passionate love and concern for the land.
978 1 74027 601 6, 92pp, $22.00

‘A spacious walking meditation on place by an attentive and courageously permeable writer who has come to love this island as intensely as those of us bound to it by birth and ancestry and who has allowed its presence to inhabit and inform the quietly assured cadences of her verse and prose. Journeys of the spirit, landscapes of the mind and heart, symphony and silence, bone and blood and leaf and stone of country - from Cockle Creek to Albert Road, Moonah, Montrose to Mount Wellington, Bicheno to Cradle Mountain and beyond - this carefully crafted collection of poetry and essays, earthed and numinous, bound by location and a particular lived experience but infinite in intimation, exhilarating and deeply restful, is a small jewel of a work.’ - Terry Whitebeach
978 1 74027 657 3, 70pp, $22.00

The latest good-humoured collection from the pen of this popular NSW South Coast poet.
978 1 74027 403 6, 40pp, $15.00

A smorgasbord of thoughts and ideas ranging from sardines, crayfish in pots, the Blarney stone, a Degas painting, blowflies and wild things to Cicero and the dustman, with a question and an answer along the way.
978 1 74027 530 9, 36pp, $12.50

These diverse poems explore the symbol of light and its impact on her life. Thérèse believes the human mind is a receptacle for the light. Inner spirituality, beauty of landscape, the vulnerability of humanity, and the need for forgiveness and healing explore this theme. Her poems are an authentic expression of living.
1 74027 319 2, 72pp, $18.00

Thérèse Corfiatis lives on Tasmania's north-west coast at Ulverstone. In this collection, her poems explore displacement and loss, journeys that take us through 'cathedrals of blood and bone' and how these journeys redefine a sense of belonging to any given place. Her deep love of landscape transforms into the sacred. Themes of light, colour and space cry out. Be prepared to go on a journey that will take you into every human emotion.
978 1 74027 511 8, 76pp, $18.00

‘The benefice of nature becomes the touchstone for the majority of poems in this collection. Nature manifests itself in all aspects of the senses and in this the poet paints, for the reader, a palette of nature’s deliverances. Even the raw emotions become tempered with the pulsating rhythm of nature. It is as if the benevolence of nature accepts and understands the torments of the human heart and helps lead those who are infused with nature’s delights to the edge of tranquillity.’ - Fay Forbes
978 1 74027 636 8, 74pp, $18.50

The Boy Who Loved the Moon is an exploration of a mother’s love. It is a love that transcends what most experience, because the respites from reality are so fleeting. Thérèse Corfiatis’s narrative poem, though acting as a chronicle of her son’s journey from birth, is in reality a mother’s travail. This is a defining journey where the issues and values that confront a parent with a child who is different shape the person and in doing so measure the dimensions of love. The simplicity of this narrative in verse belies the emotional anguish that underlies the journey. When reading these poems, the heart bleeds a little but is quickly healed because the author gives you permission to experience her love.
978 1 74027 778 5, 72pp, $18.50

Bairnsdale teacher William Cotter's third collection.
1 74027 332 X, 76 pages, $18.00

Moments and individual encounters help give meaning to our lives. Some we record because they give us pleasure. Some because they link us with people. Some because they emphasise our loneliness. Some are brim full of joy. Others are empty wells, or long echoes of sadness. Few are ever really forgotten.
978 1 74027 508 8, 76pp, $18.00

Often, for many people,
Life seems to have the hardness of stone,
Grey, unresponsive, impenetrable and without meaning.
These poems are attempts to find,
For one person at least,
Beauty and, perhaps, nourishment within that hardness,
Sometimes by chipping,
Sometimes by striking and, like Moses,
Hoping water will flow forth,
Sometimes by stooping,
Overturning and analysing what lies beneath,
Sometimes simply by taking time
To admire the play of light and shade over the surface.
978 1 74027 670 2, 76pp, $18.50

Long before the coming of the printing press calligraphy and illumination were used to record information and ideas. I have endeavoured here, in very simple form, to explore those old techniques. And the process has fuelled my imagination for those ancient monks, artists and scribes who, under very primitive conditions, produced manuscripts and books of incomparable depth and beauty. Clearly, I am not endeavouring here to emulate them. Their work is beyond compare. However, even my own collection, short as it is, took about three hundred hours and mistakes were inevitable. But at least, if I messed up a page - and I did, many times - I could rip it out and start again. If a scribe or artist messed up an expensive sheet of vellum or parchment, that would be seen as a major misdemeanour. Thank goodness I was using nothing more valuable that modern calligraphy paper. This short collection includes some poems in traditional forms, others in free verse. I have used a compressed Gothic hand, largely because it is relatively simple and can, therefore, be used reasonably quickly.
Illustrated in colour throughout
978 1 74027 796 9, 76pp, $20.00

Poems about dogs, gods, Australia’s military operations, injustice, politics, music, teeth, ageing, childhood and those little pieces of plastic that hold bread-bags together. A diverse collection, marked by vivid imagery, inventive use of language and humour. P.S. Cottier has worked as a university tutor, a union organiser, a lawyer and a tea lady. After finishing a PhD on images of animals in Dickens, she finds herself particularly attracted to short poems. She lives in Canberra and is now able to write full time.
‘...there is a sharp, ordered poetic intelligence at work in these mostly short, accessible poems.’ - Cordite
‘...restless, impacted energy...’ - Canberra Times
978 1 74027 525 5, 90pp, $22.50

P.S. Cottier

It’s a fine line between reality and fantasy. These poems open up a world of atheistic angels, grammar obsessed fairies, depressive canned laughter, invisible cats and floating sheep. P.S. Cottier also touches on more traditional poetic concerns, such as death and music, in her lively and inventive language.
‘Cottier is an eccentric, and one who writes well.’ -  Michael Byrne
‘…droll, intelligent and varied.’ - Canberra Times
978 1 74027 695 5, 58pp, $20.00

P.S. Cottier

Some years ago a friend who had just become a grandparent told Wilma Davidson that every other love prepared you for the love a grandparent feels for a grandchild and this love is like no other. The moment Wilma held her granddaughter for the first time; she knew this to be true, that this was indeed Grand Love. This collection of poetry journeys through Wilma's three years of being a grandparent and the joys and sorrows of other grandparents, be they friends or strangers.
978 1 74027 585 9, 42pp, $18.00

Two poets, with distinctive voices and a flair for language, share their thoughts on yesterday, today and tomorrow.
1 74027 352 4, 58pp, $17.50

Of Two Minds brings two fine poets - and good friends - together for a second time. They present sharply contrasting yet complementary visions. Beryl Doble’s poems show a truthful and puncturing gaze which sees through surface superficiality to darker truths within. Her work has a sweeping moral vision which illuminates both the personal and the political. Yet her lively poems have sensuality too, and a sharp sense of wry humour. Ro Marriott’s evocative and disturbing contribution shows a very different kind of ‘mindscope’. Her hauntingly beautiful and precise poems use powerful imagery to evoke a dreamlike state. Sometimes ghostly, sometimes surreal, her spare and delicate writing draws on the unconscious mind in ways that reveals and sometimes shock, letting us see the world afresh. Yet there are strong connections between both contributions, of hard-won insights born of an unusual combination of sensitivity and toughness. Of Two Minds brings together two strong and independent women courageous enough to think honestly about life.
978 1 74027 646 7, 72pp, $18.50

‘A long-awaited collection from a self-confessed late bloomer, Brendan Doyle’s poems are insightful, closely observed and emotionally honest. They range over a wide territory: childhood and family, society and politics, travel, the absurd in the everyday, relationships, the joy and solace of nature. There is humour too, even when he is peering into the dark.’ - Deb Westbury
978 1 74027 762 4, 64pp, $20.00

Focuses on art, the natural world, the intimacy of love, human caprice. These poems will stop you in your tracks with the force of their emotional intensity.
'...a highly intelligent, inventive and gifted poet...' - Les Murray
'Sincere, intimate and straightforward...' - Canberra Times
Indigo
978 1 74027 398 5, 100pp, $20.00

In The Love Procession Suzanne Edgar again focuses on art, the natural world and the intimacy of love and loss. Her poems deliver emotional intelligence and humour with unobtrusive skill that blends form and content in beguiling ways. George Thomas has praised the book’s ‘impressive clarity, concision, pungency and musicality’.
‘Edgar continues to astound with the daring discoveries and explorations of her poetry.’ - Les Murray
‘…an intense, melodious, carefully crafted, rewarding performance.’ - Canberra Times
‘…a meticulous concern with structure, an assured control of diction, and an admirable feeling for tone.’ - Antipodes
'Deceptively everyday poems about strangers, neighbours and family sometimes reflect joy, sometimes love's painful other side of a loved one lost.' - InDaily
978 1 74027 775 4, 108pp, $20.00

Brenda Eldridge says, 'We cannot always control what touches our lives. We do all have the gift of choice. We can choose how we are going to allow ourselves to be affected. Bitterness seeps in unnoticed if we are not vigilant and sours everything we do, think and say. There is much to be learned from watching how Mother Nature heals the wounds inflicted by uncaring, thoughtless mankind. By watching others, we can use them as an example of how we do, or don’t, want to be.'
‘...the voice of this poet is warm, simple without being simplistic, true to life and melodious.’ - Tamba
978 1 74027 538 5, 76pp, $18.00

Brenda Eldridge

Brenda Eldridge says, 'We cannot always control what touches our lives. We do all have the gift of choice. We can choose how we are going to allow ourselves to be affected. Bitterness seeps in unnoticed if we are not vigilant and sours everything we do, think and say. There is much to be learned from watching how Mother Nature heals the wounds inflicted by uncaring, thoughtless mankind. By watching others, we can use them as an example of how we do, or don’t, want to be.'
978 1 74027 623 8, $10.00

Brenda Eldridge

In her first collection, The Silver Cord, the author shared her journey of rebuilding a life shattered by tragedy and broken dreams. It's All Good further explores that journey, revealing that the balance between the dark and the light is not always precarious and that it is the combination of wisdom and youthful persistence that teaches us to find the positive in every experience.
‘Every piece is a poem with the perception only poetry can deliver.’ - Studio
978 1 74027 570 5, 88pp, $20.00

Brenda Eldridge

In her earlier collections, the author wrote of her journey of recovery from facing tragedy to seeing that the world and life are filled with good things when we allow ourselves to be open to them. Having poems published opened the door to a new way of living. A Personal View is a collection of observations and discoveries made in the first year of the author's new life beside a tidal reach and shows, again, how nature has been keenly instrumental in the continuing healing of old sorrows.
‘The collection showcases a beautiful array of natural and domestic images, described in free verse style. Windy nights, the mighty Huon River, dolphins and pelicans decorate her patient observance. Even notions of a passing train like some ‘giant caterpillar’ continue to draw relationships to nature rather than to artifice.’ - Voice
‘A Personal View is not something to read in a rush. Not even something to read from start to finish necessarily. Brenda Eldridge’s latest book is something to dip into, like the water she writes about. Take your time, breathe, enjoy the poems, enjoy nature, enjoy the moment.’ - Sharon Kernot
978 1 74027 617 7, 66pp, $18.50

Brenda Eldridge

There are those who would have us believe there can be closure to emotions. What they really mean is they don’t want to hear about them any more. But if we want to be true to ourselves and truly alive, we must learn how to embrace our experiences and all the feelings that came with them. In stillness, all things are possible. For this poet, a quiet garden, a walk on the beach, mean the natural rhythms of life ease angst and act as balm on wounds that can never heal, while her spirit still soars to the far reaches of the Universe and rejoices in being alive.
‘…a celebration of day to day events that we habitually take for granted…accessible and warm.’ - Tamba
978 1 74027 714 3, 72pp, $18.50

Brenda Eldridge

We were enjoying a blissful life, making the most of every day. I, the poet, was still rather bemused by the freedoms of retirement and Stephen was doing what he loves - publishing. Our idyll was rudely interrupted when we were told that Stephen had cancer. We were suddenly thrust into an unaccustomed world. This is not a horror story. Stephen relied on stoicism and determination to get through. The poet wrote her way through a harsh reality and the story of a new love that was tested - and not found wanting. The unfailing love and support of family, friends and caring dedicated medical professionals was lavishly laced with black humour. Homemade soup with love in every spoonful has to be the best remedy for healing. Once again the poet found comfort in the gift of words in a time of dire need and the ongoing struggle between darkness and light.
‘...a declaration of courage and of love in a crisis, a testament to all who are touched by cancer. Beyond that, we are reminded of the healing power of love, and of writing.’ - Ann Nadge
978 1 74027 661 0, 72pp, $18.50

Brenda Eldridge

Seven poets - four from Tasmania, three from South Australia, with more than a dozen published collections of poetry between them - discuss the question ‘Are you brave enough to be a poet?’ and reveal some passionate and surprising reasons for pursuing their craft.
978 1 74027 692 4, 40pp, $12.50

Brenda Eldridge

Twenty-eight writers reflect in fiction, non-fiction and poetry on the past, present and future of Port Adelaide.
‘Port Adelaide is not so different from many country towns whose fortunes have come and gone. For all the hype about making it into something new and glitzy, I suspect the ghosts have other ideas. It is the home of people who recognise there is more to life than material ownership and still enjoy buying their vegetables from a greengrocer and stamps from cheerful ladies in the post office.’ - Brenda Eldridge
978 1 74027 705 1, 122pp, $20.00

Brenda Eldridge

For many years I have been an admirer of Edith Holden and longed to have the talent to draw flora and fauna as she did in her Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady. I am also envious of her knowledge of poetry that enabled her to enrich her own observations with quotes from so many well-respected poets. This journal, started in September 2010, is as close as I can get to Edith Holden. Not for me the beautiful English countryside I knew so well as a child. My observations, captured with a camera and my own artistic skills, then, I hope, complemented by my own poems, are of this extraordinary country I choose to live in.
Illustrated in colour throughout.
978 1 74027 736 5, 70pp, $20.00

Brenda Eldridge

Generally, I’m not much of a hoarder. I don’t know why people collect buttons, biscuit tins or model cars. I do know why I collect scarves. I love colours and textures. Colours in particular influence or enhance my moods. For me, scarves are sensuous creatures. They add elegance and even glamour, a touch of the exotic to the ordinary. And while some people carry a talisman or good luck charm for confidence, I wear scarves. By putting the right one on, I’m certain I can do anything, and have. I look at mine hanging on the hat stand and folded in the cupboard and I can remember where they came from and the when and why they came to live with me. If books, for me, are like old and dear friends, then so too are my scarves.
Illustrated in colour throughout.
978 1 74027 752 5, 46pp, $18.50

Brenda Eldridge

I have found much poetry in a life of flying, teaching and farming. Most of it has been kept within but these few fragments have escaped onto the printed page. When all else is done, it is only the poetry that survives. It is that which defines us.
978 1 74027 772 3, 34pp, $16.00

‘Meet people like your own friends, neighbours, family, and taste slices of life from the rich and famous, in these skilfully crafted poetic portraits. Joan Fenney shares their little secrets and idiosyncrasies, eavesdrops on their conversations, looks inside their handbags. An intelligent, accessible collection which exposes the loves, losses, thoughts and aspirations of humankind.’ - Jude Aquilina
978 1 74027 559 0, 84pp, $20.00

‘Well-known writer and translator Amelia Fielden is the editor of this collection of tanka by 45 different Australian poets which celebrates the love of food and drink. The voices in this book are diverse; the kinds of tanka gathered here are varied in style and tone. This is an anthology like no other: rather than merely defining a particular territory, the work of the writers gathered here in fact illuminates the way in which food and drink impinge on our lives: childhood, relationships, love, celebrations, the seasons, travels, works of art, ageing and more. Frequently inventive and painterly in their impressions, the tanka underline a musical melody in the poets’ writing that animates each line of every tanka and whose inclusiveness, imagination and play are the life of every poem. These are bright, intelligent, direct tanka that have a playful way with images. Their compression, sensibility and respect for language is a delight.’ - Patricia Prime, editor of Kokako
‘How satisfying this buffet of tanka from Down Under. The menu features distinctively Australian foods such as yabbies, Weetbix, minted lamb chops, quince paste, “melting moment” biscuits, and billy cans full of blackberries. Forty-five poets, both well-known tankaists and newcomers to the form, offer an exotic and delightful feast for the senses.’ - Margaret Chula, President, Tanka Society of America
978 1 74027 712 9, 40pp, $15.00

‘This anthology addresses the diversity of music: the impact of its presence, or absence, in our lives. From its harmony of subject matter, solo voices rise in turn to capture our attention. We wonder with the shakuhachi player whether the music he knows he played is what the audience heard, and we muse on the individual nature of listening. Several poets remind us of ambient sounds that impinge on the totality of our engagement with what we hear; the clatter of tea cups, the wail of a siren, the concert cough. As is fitting, the music of the natural world finds its place in this collection: diverse bird calls and windsong, the rhythm of tides and the underscore of cicadas. In one imaginative tanka it is not the sound of birds but their “drift and dive”, that reminds the poet of Chopin. From Beethoven to boogie-woogie, Handel to honky-tonk, The Melody Lingers On is a celebration of music in its varied elements and tones.’ - Beverley George
978 1 74027 770 9, 52pp, $15.00

‘From a neat house in a neat street comes the rich, roving exploration across continents, lives and centuries. Frances’s eye is hungry, always a little restless…sometimes to the point of agile subversion. This is an intensely felt collection, a cascade of moments captured with great care and empathy.’ - Les Wicks
‘Where She Lives is a rich and varied collection. “Painting Emilie Kloge” is written from the perspective of Klimt’s model. Like his paintings, this poem oozes colour and sensuality. “Theo Remembering” and “School for Lacemakers” are poignant yet restrained in the telling. “Meeting Billy Collins” and “On the Bus with Les Murray” offer fond memories of such luminaries. “Achondroplastic” is a deeply affecting poem. “Getting the Most Out of Sex” will surely resonate with poets. Intensely observant, these poems should find a wide readership.’ - Lorraine McGuigan, Poetry Monash
978 1 74027 731 0, 76pp, $20.00

‘…engaging, dark and witty and rambunctious and really kind of wonderful…’ - Gaylene Perry
978 1 74027 703 7, 40pp, $18.00

George Genovese was born in Malta in 1962 and immigrated to Australia in 1967. In 1985 he graduated from La Trobe University with a major in philosophy. He has since read his poetry at various venues in Victoria.
978 1 74027 408 1, 76pp, $18.00

Reflections on love, loss and the play of poetic imagination recur in this collection. In one of the two free verse works, ‘The Passing Poem’, these unite. This poem was something I felt compelled to write after attending the funerals of two friends. Both times I was struck by how people who might not normally read poetry, let alone write it, composed poems to express their grief and love. For any poet who has doubted their calling (I among them), this was a timely reminder of poetry’s ability to articulate truths in situations, particularly emotionally charged ones, which could not otherwise be as meaningfully expressed. After much travail then, and two funerals too many, I hope this offspring of my labours will make its way into the world, find friends and grow in wisdom through the years.
978 1 74017 759 4, 72pp, $18.50

'The poems are individual in style and voice, but thoughtful selection of common themes and an overall meditative tone unite them into a cohesive reflection on humanity's response to its own constructs and to its place in nature.' - Studio
978 1 74027 565 1, 76pp, $18.00

‘From an English childhood to a new life in Australia, Jill Gower’s collection is a kaleidoscope of life experiences - love, death, grief, joy and laughter - revealed with courageous honesty and deceptively simple language. The small details of time and place bring these poems alive and deliver an emotional immediacy that lingers long after each poem has ended. Jill’s collection is both a brave reflection on the complexities of modern life and a celebration of the resilience of the human heart.’ - Graham Catt
‘With beautifully selected words, the curtain of privacy is drawn aside by Jill Gower in her verse autobiography Shape of My Life. We are invited to glimpse the vulnerability of a young girl growing and maturing into a woman of tenacity, strength and serenity. Jill’s concise way with words allows readers to draw on their own experiences to enhance understanding of the complexities of relationships and humanity.’ - Brenda Eldridge
978 1 74027 724 2, 118pp, $22.50

Hills Poets is a small group of people who meet monthly at Crafers Inn in the Adelaide Hills. A selection of work from seventeen poets is presented here, in our second anthology, including some newer poets who for whom this is their first publication. We hope you enjoy these poems from the other side of the tunnel and up the hill a bit. – Jill Gower (Convenor/Editor)
978 1 74027 805 8, 76pp, $18.50

‘This collection of twenty-two themed sets, composed both with emotion and assurance by a poet skilled in the craft of tanka poetry, is, to borrow a phrase from her Hong Kong string, “a many-splendoured thing”. From the Depths gives expression to Margaret Grace’s impressions and yearnings at home and away. Almost half of the tanka sets relate experiences encountered abroad; yet, deeply personalised, they are much more than descriptions of travel.’ - Amelia Fielden
978 1 74027 722 8, 52pp, $20.00

Fran Graham is a Tasmanian poet now living in WA. She completed a Bachelor of Arts from Griffith University in 2009 and spent much of 2010 volunteering with the Activ Foundation providing recreation and travel programs for adults with an intellectual disability. She has raised four children, taught English in China, sung at weddings and funerals, driven across Australia in her Kombi van and plans more adventures as she travels through her sixties. She now resides in Mandurah, where she walks to cafés and concerts, goes swimming, rides her bike and feels blessed to have six beautiful grandchildren, a loving partner and a wonderful life. On a Hook Behind the Door is her first collection of poetry. 
978 1 74027 713 6, 70pp, $18.50

Firmly rooted in the past, these poems branch out from Old English and traditional ballads to the language of televised archeology and the travel guide, twisting from folk song to fairy tale to cafe gossip. In a tangled conversation between past and present, the voices of Vikings, poets, lovers, talking skulls, shipwrecked sailors, house painters, disgruntled middle managers, migrants and others jostle each other on their intricate journey from Rough Spun to Close Weave.
978 1 74027 777 8, 74pp, $18.50

Footprints of a Stranger is a collection of emotions - tiptoeing between the experiences of the author and the sentiments of others. Barbara Gurney’s poetry passionately explores attitudes, observes nature and reminisces.
Nature compels us to take heed - ‘stand up, bring the world your courage’.
Contemplations express the shadows lurking within us all - ‘my dark forbidden place’.
Joy comes from family, friends and life itself - ‘A glance, a smile, pass it on to me’.
‘The tenor of the poetry is quiet and often mournful; moments of joy are precious and recalled in the midst of loss and the memories of a past life…’ - West Australian
978 1 74027 767 9, 58pp, $18.00

‘Molly Guy is a true original. She is always alive to the possibilities of the quirky and the eccentric. The world of her poetry is one of offbeat grotesqueries of thought and observation, delightfully comic, but always pricking beneath the oddities of the surface to the universal truths that lie beneath. To read her work is to breathe fresh air with a faint whiff of something exotic and unexpected.’ - Tim Thorne
‘Molly Guy’s writing is unique - similar to some other comic writers but in no way derivative. She is an acrid commentator on the human condition and a left-field philosopher. She is both humorous and miserable. Her characters are ghastly and endearing and her descriptive powers quite frightening. Briefs describes itself. One would expect these shorter versions of her work would have less to say, but to my surprise they did not. They were compacted without loss of meaning because her greatest attribute is her ability to conclude, no matter what length the work is.’ - Geoffrey Dean
978 1 74027 658 0, 76pp, $18.50

'Molly Guy's writing is unique. She is an acrid commentator on the human condition and a left-field philosopher. Her characters are at once ghastly and endearing and her descriptive powers quite frightening.' - Geoffrey Dean
'Molly Guy is a true original. She is always alive to the possibilities of the quirky and the eccentric. The world of her poetry is one of offbeat grotesqueries of thought and observation, delightfully comic, but always pricking beneath the oddities of the surface to the universal truths that lie beneath. To read her work is to breathe fresh air with a faint whiff of something exotic and unexpected.' - Tim Thorne
'Molly Guy is a poet and wit who brings disparate words and images into explosive conjunctions.' - Margaret Scott
978 1 74027 801 0, 110pp, $22.50

‘Ron Heard’s recreation of the siege of Troy is graphic and imaginative, as seen through the eyes of a Greek warrior. This verse novel never falters in its respect for the original tale. But it is a respect also for that culture from which Homer’s original tale comes. While there may be some question today as to whether Homer was one man of several, there is no question about the authentic identity of Heard’s The Shadow of Troy. As an interpretation of the terrible nature of war it is as vivid as Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage. The very taste and texture of those times is dramatically evoked. Indeed, even the politics of conflict (and the deepening awareness of love in such a context) are both effectively intertwined. Both involve the struggle of the individual in the context of the collective will to war. Old sins have long shadows, they say. Heard’s terse version reaches even to Afghanistan and beyond...’ - Bruce Dawe
‘The Shadow of Troy is written with an excitement for moment and language. Heard writes of epic battles, of human bafflement, of nights gone sultry and nets cast in the sea of love. The combination of narrative and verse works effortlessly: “‘Methia asks Mnea to join her / singing the women’s bean planting song / slow rhythm for the planting / sudden leaps up the scale   to encourage beans to grow / their two voices entwine / like bean stems.” The descriptions of both nature - “we see scraps of stars” - and character - “haunting as well as haunted” - create a vivid and engaging text.’ - Kevin Gillam
978 1 74027 715 0, 206pp, $27.50

'Angela Johnson's poetry celebrates "the small personal voice", its insistent pursuit of the unique in the quotidian. Ranging over the realities of poverty, family relationships and love, and probing the connections between humanity and the natural world, these poems often surprise with their poignant, clear-eyed observation.' - Louise Wakeling
1 74027 284 6, 72pp, $18.00

‘The haiku in Alone at the Window resonate with warmth, wit and wisdom. The poet’s tender observations and clear imagery create an unfolding of meaning as the reader reflects on each poem. These moments of celebration are imbued with a sense of wonder and appreciation for life, inviting us to share the richness to be found in daily living in our relationships with each other and the world around us.’ - Lyn Reeves
978 1 74027 720 4, 32pp, $12.00

Political themes are common in these poems, though more often it is the snapshot of ordinary Afghan people affected by the ongoing war, and the international security assistance forces and international aid agencies which feature. The title poem, 'Waiting for the bus', captures much of this. Loneliness, love and loss are common themes, with the backdrop to all of it the land - remote, rugged and beautiful. While the picture is dark, there is hope in these poems - and sometimes a rare humour.
'This is not the snake oil version of events purveyed by military and government spokespersons, nor the confused swill of corporate media. It is a quiet contemplation in 54 poetic works written by a civilian woman in sojourn with Afghani people. A book to embrace.' - Rhonda Jankovic, Spoken Word, 3CR
978 1 74027 447 0, 75pp, $18.00

‘Another collection of experiences and imaginings from the watchful eye of the poet who gave us Afghanistan - waiting for the bus. Here, the poet weaves and gifts us with yet another salusalu (garland) of memories of and a passion for people struggling to adapt to the realities of their environments, that at times constitute “land beyond repair” (Somewhere Islands) yet, continuing to live dignified and worthwhile lives, “strutting proud against the grass” (Magpies of Taveuni).’ - Konai Helu Thaman (Songs of Love: new and selected poems)
The earliest poems in this collection were written between 1990 and 1995, and others twenty years later. They were written in and for different countries of the South Pacific, including Australia, a bigger island on the edge of the Pacific.
978 1 74027 725 9, 76pp, $18.50

Eileen Jones lives in Sydney and has also lived in several NSW country towns as well as Brisbane and Perth. She has worked as an accountant, and as secondary school teacher. She has attained an AMEB, Teacher, Speech and Drama, and a PhD in Psychophysiology. In 1994 Eileen had a near-death experience when a suburban bus on which she was travelling was involved in an accident. She sustained significant brain damage and was warned she might never regain her verbal skills. She began writing poetry during her convalescence and, later, prose. Since then her work has appeared in several literary magazines. Her first collected poems The Heart of the Matter, her memoir The Accidental Poet, and A Potpourri of Prose, a selection of essays, have been published by Ginninderra Press.
‘Eileen observes the world around her and is fearless in her convictions. Reflections is a lovely book of poetry written by a poet who rejoices every day and clearly relishes the process of writing.’ - Newsbite
978 1 74027 662 7, 70pp, $22.00

A collection of poems that will delight any reader. Written in an accessible language, domestic relationships are examined in all their grittiness. It is an honest disclosure of domestic life where sorrow, loss and separation are interwoven with love, humour and an over-riding celebration of life.
978 1 74027 644 3, 70pp, $18.50

‘New Voices is a vibrant and varied collection of poems certain to entertain and inform its readers. Well-known poets, such as Steve Evans, Mike Ladd, Cathy Young, Jules Leigh Koch and Louise Nicholas, are published beside rising stars Ken Vincent, Helen Lindstrom, Sharon Kernot, Gary MacRae and others. W.H. Auden said, ‘As a rule, a sign that a beginner has a genuine original talent is that he[/she] is more interested in playing with words than in saying something...’ In New Voices, poets play with skill and abandon as they roll words along tricky mazes and toss language in the air - the oft-published alongside the first published, all juggling their own truths and observations to the music of poetry. Yes, there is something circus-like about New Voices. The ring holds many stories and performers, including a cantankerous old dog, an articulate fish, a troupe of ants, even Leonard Cohen. There’s also a talking tree, a disappearing nightie and a tube full of agony, along with master chefs and the lives and deaths of people just like you and me - even the death of the apostrophe. This is contemporary poetry at its best, speaking in new voices.’ - Jude Aquilina
978 1 74027 641 2, 90pp, $22.50

In this collection of poetry the author explores the many facets of what it means to live life through the lens of schizophrenia. And yet it is more than that. Black humour, irreverent mayhem and cheerful tragedy all vie for the right to co-exist within unreality’s dark prism. Where Words Go When They Die sways from surreal, bleak and unrelenting to darkly funny and complex. A motley range of sad, deranged and zany characters join with the author’s own voice to create a deeply personal statement of intent. It is a testament to the will of a deeply flawed scribe who had no choice but to write his way out of his own personal hell. That this collection exists at all has made it all worthwhile.
978 1 74027 729 0, 76pp, $18.50

Dominic Kirwan

A frank account of a four-year struggle with a force that cannot be reasoned with - bipolar. Everybody experiences stress, guilt and grief; we all have days when we don’t like ourselves very much. Imagine waking up one day and that is all you feel for months and months. But if we are never awake in darkness, we can never truly appreciate the light. Mental illness needs to be better understood and openly accepted. Walking the Black Dog is written by one who has been to the dark side and lived to write poetry about it.
978 1 74027 780 8, 58pp, $18.00

This is Gary Langford’s twenty-seventh book and his eleventh collection of poetry. The Family Album & other poems is a culminating sequel to two other books of poetry Gary has written on his family - The Family (with coloured photographs), which is his first collection, and Four Ships and other poems, which is his second collection. The Family Album & other poems also contains artwork from three paintings the author has done recently. While he has done graphics before in a few of his books and theatre shows he has directed, this is the first book to use some of his paintings. Gary’s work is serious and comical, commonly at the same time, which is the method he has used in all his work, whether prose, poetry, plays or scripts he has written for the media over the years. His paintings unify visual expression with words. Gary was a teacher writer in Sydney for thirty years and is now a writer artist in Melbourne and Christchurch. Gary Langford Reading From His Poems has been recorded for the Poetry Archives, England, www.poetryarchives.org 2010.
978 1 74027 683 2, 90pp, $22.00

Helen Lindstrom grew up in Melbourne and now lives in Willaston, South Australia. Her poems have appeared in journals, newspapers and anthologies. In 2006 she won the Nova and Satura prizes for her poem ‘The Tent’. Her themes are feminine and domestic. She writes about growing up, mental illness, love and loss with honesty and compassion and an attention to poetic craft. This edition of Cold Comfort contains several new poems not included in the 2009 edition.
978 1 74027 660 3, 56pp, $22.00

Jacqueline Lonsdale-Cuerton was born in England in 1941. Being a war baby might have influenced the way she feels now about war and killing. She came, with her family, to a very different kind of life in Australia in 1950. Being born on a Thursday, Jacqueline blames her mother for her peripatetic lifestyle but considers herself very lucky in that she has seen as much of the world as she has.
‘…a marathon of wordspin...capsules of delight…’ - Mary O’Loghlin 
‘…there is poetry in all her gestures...’ - Yvonne Laurant
978 1 74027 788 4, 86pp, $20.00

Brenda Malcolm
Two Good Men
Brenda Malcolm's love of poetry and reading began as a young person when her father read poetry aloud to the family of an evening. Her thirst for books led her along the adventure trails of many iconic favourites of the nineteen fifties and sixties. Brenda was a foundation member of a local high school in a beachside suburb in Adelaide and upon graduation worked as a stenographer for six years. A move to Canberra in the 1970s, as a wife with two young children, gave her opportunities for part-time employment. As the children grew up, graduated and secured employment, Brenda was herself able to complete an Adult Education degree at the University of Canberra, graduating in 1996. Over the years, Brenda has been a member of a number of small, intimate and friendly writing groups and, upon retirement, joined a U3A writing group. This experience allowed her to develop a voice in writing anecdotes and stories about her early life. The poems in Two Good Men provided a means to deal with the death of her second husband from an aggressive cancer and subsequently paved the way for her to write from a very personal focus. This writing became the catalyst for her to explore the form of the poem from the aspect of a life ended to one of renewal and a new happiness.
978 1 74027 802 7, 66pp, $18.00

‘Robyn Mathison casts a curious and compassionate eye over the natural world and all its inhabitants. Her sense of wonder gives equal measure to cats, hens, historical figures and family members. The poems engage with provocative questions: Where will memory be when my body leaves? (‘Quiet House’’) and arresting imagery: Limbless, he dreams/ music of the spheres echoes/ inside his fragile shell (‘The Would-be Percussionist’).’ - Jane Williams
‘These poems are educated and skilfully executed, but at the same time reverent and thoughtful, which makes for a very enjoyable collection.’ - Studio
‘...some of the finest poems I have read.’ - Poetry Matters
‘The poet’s voice is sure, never forced and always engaging.’ - Tasmanian Sagacity
‘The poems are educated and skilfully executed, but at the same time referent and insightful, which makes for a very enjoyable collection.’ Studio
978 1 74027 558 3, 88pp, $20.00

'Shadow Selves draws the reader into the psychic and emotional tussle of contemporary lives. Some of the poems pant with sexual tension. Others ache with frustration and loss. The poetry is always intensely physical.' - Jeri Kroll
'There should be more of this kind of work - the expression of real human experience and ambiguity.' - Cordite
'...the poems in this collection are formed through an unemotional, stark and relatively objective voice that, interestingly enough, almost explicitly deals with hypersensitive, very subjective and emotionally-charged themes and subject matters.' - JAS Review of Books
1 74027 228 5, 72pp, $18.00

Deb Matthews-Zott

'The poet's slow notes are her states of intense perception. Exploring the relationships between place and distance, dream and daydream, fullness and emptiness as well as moments ending and not ending. Here’s sensuous poetry often merging taste with touch with sight with smell and, of course, with sounds.' - Graham Rowlands
'Don’t miss out on reading this...' - Independent Weekly, Adelaide
978 1 74027 477 7, 68pp, $18.00

Deb Matthews-Zott

In A Garden Full of Weeds, a lifetime’s observations and experiences are captured by Jean McArthur - poet, nurse, artist, traveller. Poignant moments are described with a visual artist’s eye and balanced with the compassion of one in the caring professions. With an intrinsic connection to the natural world, and a fascination for people, McArthur has created a unique poetry collection that spans the south-east of South Australia, to Canada, Mexico, Sri Lanka and South East Asia.
‘Jean McArthur’s journey begins on a small, isolated rural farm on South Australia’s Limestone Coast. Events both joyous and devastating are chronicled as she travels for love and for adventure. While she is away, weeds propagate profusely in unexpected places, fire burns, but no matter how hard she tries to eradicate them, these symbols return in her life, in her art and writing. In A Garden Full of Weeds Jean McArthur has grafted many weeds into treasures and sifted through ashes to find strength.’ - Jude Aquilina
978 1 74027 797 6, 134pp, $24.00

‘This first book is packed with clear-eyed veracity, offers a shining resilience, personal insight and shared comfort...we are enjoined, a chorus.’ - Les Wicks
Few poets express the meeting of nature and emotion as tenderly as Susan McCreery. Her poems open with images of nature and draw the reader in to scenarios of such heartbreak and love it is at times hard to surface. The sparkle of a boy playing in the surf, the metallic sound of betrayal on a Greek island, the humidity of a summer’s night - part physical, part longing for what has been lost. Among these gentle poems are suggestions of violence, of politics, of alienation, all held in a lacuna, waiting for that southerly to bring the pressure down.
‘Susan McCreery is a poet who knows people, their pains and their delights, as well as she knows the turning of the seasons, the ocean in its moods. The book is notable for the succession of sharp images that focus the imagination to reveal a rich world beneath the cool, breeze-ruffled surface.’ - Ron Pretty
‘McCreery’s utterance is undemonstrative, careful, natural - lyric in its refusal of excess and banality and in its careful attention to the cadence and texture of things. Read these poems, and read them again. Take them, like a walk on the beach; sit with them like a meditation.’ - Mark Tredinnick 
‘This little book is a treasure trove of memory and sensual imagery.’ - Newsbite
978 1 74027 732 7, 42pp, $17.50

Susan McCreery

‘Edgy, quirky poems and points of view, metaphors and subjects which surprise, every word counts and has been weighed and challenged in this, Paula McKay’s second volume. Topics range from reflections on artworks to a new twist on illegal immigrants to a sense that a life long and fully lived is being tidied up and assessed. This is a compelling volume and richly rewards repeated reading.’ - Sue Hicks, co-founder, Live Poets’ Society (North Sydney); founder, editor and publisher, Live Poets’ Press
‘At first one is struck by the rich vein of humour, then you realise it is a vastly more rewarding exploration of humanity in all its glory and galoshes, roaming delightfully across a range of subjects mythical, biblical, familial and ekphrasis.’ - Les Wicks
978 1 74027 781 5, 66pp, $20.00

Nature is my palette, my mentor and my mirror. Reflected in natural events and situations I see my own foibles, fancies and follies, and those of fellow humans. Many subjects for my poems are from our natural world – wildlife getting on with the daily task of living – and, often, ourselves interacting with them. Take a peek between the covers. Perhaps you will find elements of self to reflect upon too.
978 1 74027 572 9, 70pp, $18.00

The cameraman snaps, the artist paints and we as writers scribe impressions of our world as we see it. Each moment ends and life moves on. We may recall, but our memories are fickle beasts. They fade and distort with passing time. Photos, paintings and printed words help us to reconstruct and reconsider some moments we felt compelled to capture.
978 1 74027 635 1, 146pp, $24.00

'...exhibits a strong intelligence and a broad range of poetic perspective... His polished tentativeness...has a refreshing modesty not commonly found in modern writing.' - JAS Review of Books
1 74027 114 9, 72pp, $16.50

Tim Metcalf

'...writing with intelligence and asperity...wit worth the reading.' - Canberra Times
'All poets write their psyches, but in these revealing vignettes Metcalf does so more than most, and deserves congratulations and thanks for doing so.' - Muse
1 74027 168 8, 63pp, $18.00

Tim Metcalf

The third collection by this startlingly original poet.
'There is excellent work in this collection...' - Muse
1 74027 167 X, 76pp, $20.00

Tim Metcalf

One hundred poems, a historical sketch and select bibliography record a blossoming of poetry concerned to locate the human firmly at the centre of a clinical world that often has other priorities.
'...invites readers to face the ubiquitous fears of illness, mental imbalance and death with an unflinching sense of empathy and understanding.' - Five Bells
1 74027 369 9, 147pp, $27.50

The fourth stunning collection from this award-winning poet and physician.
978 1 74027 473 9, 96pp, $25.00

Tim Metcalf

The fifth collection from this acclaimed poet, a practising physician.
978 1 74027 654 2, 104pp, $35.00

Tim Metcalf

Anne Walsh Miller’s poems expose the electricity of the eternal that pulses through the livewire of everyday occurrence. I Love Like a Drunk Does assures that from darkness comes the most shadow-splitting light, if you choose it.
978 1 74027 542 2, 46pp, $17.50

'Geoff Miller's poems take us behind closed eyes, playfully alerting us to our own most precious moments. Miller's honesty, and his deep care for the small but important things too many of us neglect, make this a heartening and optimistic collection.' - Dr Kristen Lang
978 1 74027 577 4, 52pp, $18.00

‘What is impressive is the ambit of this collection, the way Morgan explores with equal authority the natural world, history, mythology, the vagaries of humankind, and grief. A finely-tuned intelligence shines through these poems, which are lexically rich and jam-packed with precise imagery. Her poems marry the down-to-earth to the numinous; they make evident the breadth of Morgan’s engagement with life and with language, and her passion for fusing the two.’- Kathryn Lomer
978 1 74027 579 8, 74pp, $18.00

Anne Morgan

Whether they be in China, Cambridge, country Australia or suburban streets, Ann Nadge reflects on and recreates experiences which 'corrugate the heart', leading to moments of insight and new awareness.
1 74027 220 X, 125pp, $20.00

Poems drawing on the intersecting landscapes of memory, travel and reflection. Inspired by John Rose playing a fence at Milparinka, the title poem explores the interplay of landscape and human creativity and fences that join or divide.
1 74027 272 2, 110pp, $22.50

In her third collection, Ann Nadge explores the ways in which single or cumulative experiences shift the light of our understanding, bringing new insights. Her subject matter ranges from reflections on Florence to a walk in Manly.
1 74027 355 9, 102 pages, $20.00

Ann Nadge’s fourth collection. The poems reflect the sometimes subtle, sometimes forceful ways in which perception impacts on the margins of experience and on our understanding of ourselves in time and place.
978 1 74027 471 5, 88pp, $22.00

‘The barest record is enough.’ At the heart of this collection lies a sequence of poems created by combining verbatim phrases and fragments from the letters of Keats, Shelley, Mary Shelley, Wordsworth, T.E. Lawrence, Wilfred Owen and Virginia Woolf. The letter fragment poems bring the writers’ voices to life, the barest of records from two centuries speaking of love, faith, loss, journeying and war – souls reaching from boundless, solitary places.
978 1 74027 592 7, 86pp, $22.00

‘This delightful compilation of poems by the South Australian Ginninderra Poets serves to continue the acknowledged presence of poetry as an identified and treasured element of family life at The Cedars. The works selected, along with Kevin Stead’s drawings, capture the unique spirit of this very special place.’ - Allan Campbell, Curator of The Cedars
978 1 74027 655 9, 104pp, $20.00

Blundstones & a Brown Dog is about living in the real world with your heart and your eyes wide open. This collection, written over a twenty-five-year period, speaks about the perplexity of simple things: love, death, longing, friendship, hope. Its voice is human, fallible, incomplete. It's about the journey and the dreaming; it's about lives as precious and fragile as fine china.
978 1 74027 392 3, 70pp, $18.00

January, Melbourne, hot midsummer. The holidays fizzle in a kind of endless dryness. A heat haze off the bitumen and the ache of the afternoon sun. A bunch of kids starts grade six at Peel Street School. It’s the high tide of the post-war migrant boom; every term there’s someone new - from England, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Germany, Hungary, Holland, Russia... It’s a magical year, the last year of innocence, a year poised between new growth and the hardening of a tangible future - the last year before adolescence decides who will thrive, who will struggle and who will falter...
978 1 74027 615 9, 64pp, $18.00

‘With this, her first published collection of poetry, Jill Nevile demonstrates that contemporary verse need not be oblique or obscure. She writes with an intriguing and refreshing candour on topics as diverse as her life in Britain, her flirtations with Greece and her love affair with Australia. Writing in both free and traditional verse, Jill conveys her acute observations and unerring eye for detail with great skill. Whether reminiscing on past attachments or celebrating the joy of nature and her surrounds, Jill Nevile’s poetry is clear, succinct and, above all, a pleasure to read.’ - Vic Jefferies
978 1 74027 631 3, 62pp, $18.00

'Sit quietly with these poems and you’ll come to know how stillness can come alive with blossom, memory, playfulness, birdsong, companionship, prayer, mystery.' - Peter Bishop, Creative Director, Varuna – The Writers' House
‘...introduces us to a skilful writer whose subjects range without strain from the domestic fantasies that a cocktail cabinet could invite, to Belfast, from the realms of childhood to those of politics.’ - Canberra Times
978 1 74027 580 4, 80pp, $20.00

Almost 200 sonnets written by Australians since 1945.
'...reading was like finding a collection of small gems...a superb selection...' - Muse
'...most definitely worth buying...' - Quadrant
'...fine collection...' - Canberra Times
Indigo
1 74027 218 8, 112pp, $20.00

‘In Petrescu’s poem, Afternoon at Buon Giorno’s, Poetry with a capital P, elegantly sitting drinking lemon, lime and bitters, remarks that her interest now is in the lyrical stance of the ordinary. To which her interlocutor, Mephistopheles, replies, Bullshit. Should Poetry sell her soul to this devil? Of course she should - but only if he is a less whimsical figure than the neo-Gothic Dracula Bram Stoker ascribed to Petrescu’s native Transylvania.’ - John Drew, Cambridge, UK
978 1 74027 742 6, 64pp, $20.00

Sample a few poems from this tempting platter of poetry collected from the 2009 harvest at Carlos Restaurant in Watson, North Canberra. The Poets of Taste group was convened by Café Poet in Residence Fiona McIlroy. Poems of the day are displayed on the counter in menu-holders, and the group is now meeting in the same space re-opened as Joey’s Kitchen after the tragic death of the original owner of Carlos. We hope to continue to celebrate the spirit of the local community through poetry for many years to come. So if you believe in the value of fresh local produce…
978 1 74027 690 0, 64pp, $18.50

Jessica Raschke uses words as shards, reflecting fragmented emotional states. Her poems glisten with confidence as they ricochet between the abstract and the deeply felt. But feelings are seen as capable of deception and, like reflections in a mirror, they are reversed and distorted. Despite a strong feeling for ambiguity, Raschke’s poems hold a certain intimacy and the promise of revelation.
978 1 74027 501 9, 38pp, $17.50

Jessica Raschke

Enter The Beguilings, a seductive world of striking poems that break through the confines of expectation in love, intimacy and identity. By turns illuminating and provocative, Jessica Raschke's second poetry collection reveals connections and collision points between sensual and spiritual needs. Raschke's writing is testimony to the beautiful truth of emotion and the pleasures of relinquishing control to find release.
978 1 74027 609 2, 42pp, $18.00

Jessica Raschke

‘An eclectic collection of poetry from an experienced writer who already has numerous publications to her credit. Now here is a book that reflects the author’s remarkable ability to use the written word as free verse, and in traditional poetic structure. More recently Cynthia Rowe has embraced, with outstanding success, the ancient Japanese forms of haiku, senryu, tanka and haibun, which are extensively represented in this volume. The sentient reader will find much to engage and delight.’ - Quendryth Young, Cloudcatchers
978 1 74027 652 8, 88pp, $22.00

Cynthia Rowe

‘John Sabine writes with the authority and gentle humour of experience. As I savoured this collection of his poetry, I felt like a child at the knee of a venerable grandfather, listening, absorbing with wonder the things he was opening my eyes and senses to. Yet I also found myself thinking, “Oh yes, I know just what you mean…” when he writes of love, children, art and nature. John’s words are sometimes serious, sometimes light-hearted, but I was always aware of his eye for detail, an eye that is constantly twinkling.’ - Brenda Eldridge
978 1 74027 774 7, 76pp, $18.50

Brenda Saunders is an artist and writer of Aboriginal and British descent. She has read in several poetry events with the Sydney Writers’ Festival and is a member of DiVerse poets, who present their ekphrastic poetry at public art exhibitions in Sydney. Brenda was awarded the 2012 Varuna Dorothy Hewett Poetry Fellowship and in 2013 a CAMAC Fellowship to work in France.
‘Rich with insight and sensuous music, the sound of red radiates real power and authority.’ - Deb Westbury
‘The strength of Brenda Saunders’ work is her ability to place you, absolutely, at a point of seeing. Beyond ekphrastic, these poems describe the palette of being, in exceptional ways. Herself a fine artist, Saunders creates small poetic masterpieces which respond tautly to place, the train wreck of life and art.’ - Anna Kerdijk Nicholson
978 1 74027 799 0, 76pp, $20.00

‘Here is the well made poem, flowing lovingly and effortlessly from beneath her fingers. Whether it’s her careful observations of the natural world, reflections on art, collecting stones on the beach, her traveller’s eye or musing on religion and philosophy she is in command of the poem and there is a sure-footedness with the words that make for very satisfying reading. Ros Schulz has been long at work on this very admirable collection and it is wonderful to see it in print at last. The effect on me of the poems she echoes in “Ordinary Geese” as she watches the birds from her car: “At the core of me, a quiet calm”.’ - Jeff Guess
‘...the collection is strong and rewarding... Poetry reading for those both dedicated to the craft and the newcomers.’ - Independent Weekly
978 1 74027 627 6, 108pp, $22.00

‘Whetting his expressiveness on the everyday, as in “the waitress”, Jim recognises a significance in what appears to be little more than alienated labour. His own translation from illiteracy into art speaks to his trust that all of life might be transformed through the self-emancipation of his class.’ - Humphrey McQueen
‘He’s made a pen of his boning knife and set about eviscerating cant and claptrap. All that accumulated experience, learning, reflecting, sizing up is the muscle behind that blade filleting the body politic, hauling its carcass up on his butcher’s hook; ‘upside down power! wi trickle down-sizin’/and a billion starving people”.’ - Ray Hearne
‘This is a terrific collection of poetry, because it records a life well-lived in a form that gives us a new way to think through the whole notion of living a life well.’ - Now & Then
978 1 74027 606 1, 116pp, $22.50

Eclectic moments of rural life and diverse people - some infamous - are captured here in poetry sometimes terse, sometimes effusive.
1 74027 323 0, 47pp, $17.50

Are you concerned by globalisation, privatisation, global warming, George W. Bush et al., the new IR laws? If so, these satirical monologues may make you smile or groan, or both.
978 1 74027 426 5, 40pp, $15.00

Robin Sinclair lives in the Adelaide Hills, where she paints, writes, walks, gardens and observes. She has a husband who makes puppets, a son who has adventures and writes about it, another who writes verse novels, and a daughter who composes music and teaches others to love it. Family habits include writing silly verse at Christmas and reading the dictionary at mealtimes.
978 1 74027 676 4, 76pp, $18.50

'Smith sees life and relationships as they really are and is able to express the experience in a poetic form which makes reading poetry a worthwhile experience.' - LiNQ
1 74027 377 X, 72pp, $18.00

A new collection from this widely acclaimed poet.
‘Smith’s poetry is a treat... [The collection is] well gathered, well written and a rewarding journey into that most interesting of landscapes - Australia and of course, the human experience.’ - The Journal
‘...Smith’s talent for bringing characters to life is exceptional.’ - Wet Ink
978 1 74027 600 9, 74pp, $18.50

‘…recurring themes include loss, memory, regret, failed relationships, loneliness, parenting and aging. While such a catalogue of themes may suggest that the collection is dark and bleak, Smith provides many moments of light and writes in a direct and honest tone that certainly does not create a gloomy atmosphere. Smith’s style is direct, simple and understated. He has a knack for creating similes and metaphors that are vivid and concrete.’ - Transnational Literature
‘…collection of unexpected treasures… Smith’s writing brazenly acknowledges all that is solemn, sorrowful, and sardonic.’ - Boston Literary Magazine
978 1 74027 706 8, 44pp, $18.00

A new collection from this acclaimed poet.
‘…well put together and the poems sit comfortably with one another. Smith uses rhyme and form skilfully and the book includes some well-crafted sonnets.’ - londongrip.co.uk
978 1 74027 766 2, 62pp, $18.00

Lively and varied, this collection rushes the reader headlong through love, grief, outrage, takoyaki, alienation and football.
1 74027 083 5, 56pp, $16.00

Melinda Smith

'[T]he work of a poet who...deals directly with life as it is. She takes the reader on journeys into the past, through childhood, and across relationships. Her poems have a tenderness of expression and...use the transforming power of imagery to connect with her readers...' - Geoff Page
1 74027 264 1, 62pp, $17.50

Melinda Smith

The poems in First… Then… explore many different voices from ‘planet autism’ - from verbal and non-verbal autistic children to autistic men and women, to parents, carers and siblings. The focus is on the experience of living with autism, but you do not need to know or be an autistic person to enjoy this book. The poems are by turns moving, harrowing and laugh-out-loud funny and provide a unique window into a much misunderstood facet of the human experience.
978 1 74027 734 1, 46pp, $17.50

Melinda Smith

'The inviting openness of Robert M. Steley's poetry is matched by a capacity to deliver strong doses of the intensity we demand of good poems. From Coal Mines to Computers consistently offers us sharp new perceptions of daily experience, carried by a voice capable of a wide range of moods, from the elegiac to the mischievous.' - Ross Gillett
978 1 74027 582 8, 70pp, $18.00

Life’s Puddings

You’ve turned to the back to decide if you’ll purchase this book
I’ll tell you how
A villanelle can offer you life as you take a new look

At mind-boggling moments no simple good sentence will brook
I’ll make you a vow
That you’ll do it too if you follow the scope of this book

As wordsmith bad moments I’ve writ as some limp-wristed sook
Or a tail-flicking cow
But a villanelle transforms those efforts anew with its look

If you’ve searched for the flavour and culinary magic a cook
Who stirs words can endow
I offer some recipes plated by me in this book

And what do I think of the effort and time that it took?
Did it tempt me to cry?
No ‘cos it offered me meaning which props up each look

At my life and its puddings the mixtures an oven turns crook
But hope cannot die
A villanelle offered its form its rhyming and look
Which I pray will prove useful to you if you do buy this book

978 1 74027 761 7, 64pp, $20.00

'Michael Thorley's poetry combines wit and emotional depth. His ability to handle both traditional and free verse forms is subtle but very impressive and his range is broad and deep.' - Suzanne Edgar
'...full of taut, sharply observed poems... Thorley works with assurance in a variety of verse forms...' - Canberra Times
Indigo
978 1 74027 498 2, 76pp, $20.00

This collection of tanka affords the attentive reader a dialogue with the author which is both intimate and universal; a glimpse of the inner world of this sensitive poet and a commentary on the joys and tribulations of human existence. rick rack offers poems of grief and vulnerability, joy and humour, passion and resignation, and the conscious acceptance of transience. Julie Thorndyke's commitment to this genre has earned her international recognition. She is among the leading poets writing tanka in Australia today.
'...you will enjoy it and be moved by it.' - Denis M. Garrison, Modern English Tanka
‘These warm, spare tanka move exquisitely between memory, imagination and emotion...’ - Kokako
978 1 74027 524 8, 58pp, $17.50

‘Each carefully crafted poem in this collection blends sensitivity with realism. Julie Thorndyke writes with an original and spirited voice that addresses contemporary themes, while paying due regard to tanka traditions.’ - Beverley George, Editor Eucalypt: a tanka journal
‘In this new collection, Julie Thorndyke demonstrates her mastery of the short form poetry we know as tanka. She has an innate sense of rhythm in her writing and, with her skilled use of figurative language, brings us moments that sometimes defy interpretation yet pierce to the bone.’ - Carole MacRury, Secretary/Treasurer, Tanka Society of America
‘Julie Thorndyke's second tanka collection more than fulfils the promise of her first, rick rack. In Carving Granite she reveals the light and shade of her world.’ - Amelia Fielden, poet and translator
‘…a polished collection, beautifully produced…moments of clear vision and intense poetic revelation.’ - Atlas Poetica
978 1 74027 672 6, 72pp, $18.50

'...a great debut from a poet who, from the outset, commands attention with her honesty, psychological insight and her emotional assurance.' - John Jenkins
'...powerful work...' - Muse
1 74027 183 1, 72pp, $18.00

‘In these poems Karen Throssell writes about life, especially family life, in generous, large and encompassing terms. The poetry is fearless about moments of grief and love, but leavened with a wry sense of irony. Across the collection, Karen Throssell draws insightful threads of connection between the domestic/personal and the social/political. Her imagery ranges from the home garden to myth, refusing to be pinned down and yielding a freshness that makes the poetry like spring water - it nourishes.’ - Carmel Macdonald Grahame
978 1 74027 760 0, 74pp, $18.50

Leon Trainor's fourth collection of poems. It spans major events in his life, including the early years of his marriage and experience of Europe, a crisis of love and faith and the final illness and death of his wife. The collection culminates in the poet's encounters with Asia through his work and travels in the region. Trainor captures those circumstances that had a profound impact on him. Such moments, often found in the small events of daily life, are full of wonderment and beauty. They continue to the present day.
'Trainor is in the first rank of Australian poets writing today.' - Ann Nugent, Blast
Indigo
978 1 74027 568 2, 72pp, $20.00

Bill Tully has lived in Canberra for over forty years as a student, librarian, political/arts activist and retiree. He has worked with many groups and journals from Canberra Community News to Voice, and has broadcast on Radio 2XX FM 98.5 from 1976. The poems collected here were written in 2009 and 2010.
978 1 74027 634 4, 66pp, $18.50

Bill Tully has lived over two-thirds of his life in Canberra. In retirement he rages, ranges and reviews life as country boy in Victoria’s western district, mill worker in Mount Gambier, clerk in Melbourne and librarian and political activist in Canberra. Some of this gets into his second poetry collection, written in 2010 and 2011.
978 1 74027 688 7, 70pp, $18.50

‘I personally found the poetry collection breathtaking and very moving. It displays poise and balance despite the traumatic events it narrates. I admired the poet’s construction of scenes and characters for its minimalism and empathy…the way that we can place ourselves, imaginatively, in the position of another person.’ - Dominique Hecq
In 2006 Susie Utting was a volunteer with a relief aid team at an orphanage on a ranch in Southern Zimbabwe. She and her husband raised their children on a small farm in Gippsland, Victoria. This collection of poems portrays her personal journey through the trauma witnessed in Zimbabwe and connections made with trauma in her own life. Susie wrote this collection as part of her Master of Philosophy degree at the University of Queensland and is now studying for her doctorate at the University of the Sunshine Coast.
978 1 74027 748 8, 68pp, $20.00

A collection of poems drawing on the author’s personal work experience and from many years of observing some of the more tragic aspects of our society. Some of the poems are written in the voice of a social worker, others in the voice of the client. All paint a picture of personal disadvantage and tragedy. In these days of blame and shame it is easy to dismiss, the criminal, the drug addicted, the violent, without remembering that they are also victims.
978 1 74027 549 1, 54pp, $17.50

Ken Vincent

It was an act of simple kindness for an Australian couple to take two Czech refugees from post World War II Europe into their working-class home. They could never have foreseen the tensions these sophisticated Europeans would create, or the life-changing impact they would have on their teenage daughter. A Promise of Peaches explores sympathetically the culture clashes of 1950s immigration, not unlike those of today, and shows with sensitivity the unfolding of adolescent sexuality.
‘A Promise of Peaches is a thoughtful and deeply compassionate examination in verse of female adolescence and cultural tensions in Melbourne in the early 1950s. Valerie Volk has the reader sympathising almost equally with all her main protagonists, despite the steadily mounting conflicts between them. Mutual incomprehension between and within the “old” Australians and the “new” is dramatically portrayed and its climactic resolution persuasively drawn.’ - Geoff Page
‘I read this manuscript in one sitting, without pause, a testimony to its readability and its inherent interest... A verse novel has proved ideal for the task: the work is compressed and the form suits the intensity of the subject... The climax, when the adolescent Claire begins her sexual awakening in response to Viktor, is handled with tact and expertly delineates the responses of the two. The triumph of the novel is this respect for all the main characters - even Irena, who could be a standard “femme fatale”.’ - Thomas Shapcott (Professor Emeritus of Creative Writing, University of Adelaide)
‘…worthy of joining such recognised Australian examples of this genre as Les Murray’s 1980 The Boys Who Stole the Funeral, John Tranter’s 1992 The Floor of Heaven, and Dorothy Porter’s 2007 El Dorado.’ - InDaily
978 1 74027 656 5, 168pp, $25.00

Do our dreams guide us, or confine us? Can we ever shake loose that thread of hope telling us that there is something greater out there? Should we? Should we ever stop striving for a better future, even when our memories and our pain deny us the chance to dream? Can we ever silence that whispering voice? Do our safety zones keep us safe, or do they trap us inside our fear? Do you feel safe in the midst of a thousand others? Or are you hidden and inconsequential?
978 1 74027 738 9, 72pp, $18.50

A rich and evocative collection from the author of the acclaimed novel Boat People.
978 1 74027 557 6, 58pp, $17.50

If stillness can be tasted, precious memories will return, such as poetry once learned by heart, which in Maurice Whelan’s case told of King Arthur receiving his sword Excalibur from the maiden in the lake. If silence can be heard, a poetry in life will breathe, as in this poet’s observation about a dawn which ‘...holds/its perfection/as long/as you hold your breath’. As contrast to a hurried world, Maurice finds a treasury in stillness - Gaelic melodies in the twilight of his mind, his wandering in the slipstream of a silent father’s dreams, and from a wonderful ‘Perfect Pitch’ - his reassuring knowing that ‘the bow is on the string/fingers caress keys, eyes/are closing and heaven’s gate/is opening once again’. This beautiful anthology combines nostalgia for times past, gratitude for nature’s riches and a psychoanalyst’s characteristically sharp insights into personal relationships: ‘I wasn’t staring/I saw my youth in you./That’s all.’ His skill in crafting apparently effortless lines, seldom interrupted by commas, semicolons or full stops, conceals the challenge of holding a pen and facing a blank page. ‘Sometimes/finding the right word/is like drilling through concrete/with a jackhammer.’ There’s a brave frankness in such an admission but the poetry which then emerges has been conceived from the peace in silence, the reflection and recall made possible by stillness. No wonder that, on a front page, before his own work begins, Maurice quotes Hazlitt: ‘Poetry...is not a branch of authorship: it is the stuff of which our life is made.’ - Stuart Rees
978 1 74027 693 1, 54pp, $18.00

'With their seeking out of common ground between strangers, mothers and daughters, friends and lovers, Jane Williams's poems are full of warmth and delight in being alive. Bullies, funerals and "business as usual" exist here, but so too does the possibility of being "surprised by joy". The language is beautifully sparse and understated, hitting home with sudden images which are startling and powerful. Begging the Question is a book to keep by the bed and read again and again. Its grace and clarity make the world feel a better place.' - Jean Kent
978 1 74027 475 3, 56pp, $17.50

Illustrated by Helen Timbury
'A bird-loving man: haiku and tanka collects haiku, tanka, haibun, tanka prose and sequences from a variety of locations and experiences. Rodney Williams’s poems have a thoughtful musicality and romance, a sense of humour and sadness to which many people will relate. The poems are carefully crafted, honest and unsentimental, working well on many levels and eliciting a variety of genuine emotions in the reader. They have such sharp details that one can immediately visualise the context. Here we encounter poems that readers living in Australia will be able to interpret with their direct knowledge of local birds, beaches, forests and wildlife. But this is not to say that international readers will not also enjoy the poems, as many are broadly relevant to life.' - Patricia Prime, editor, Kokako (NZ)
'The reader will dip into this book time and again, only to discover something new, to find a different take on life, to take a fresh view of the biosphere and its intricacies. Worth visiting and revisiting.' - Cynthia Rowe, FreeXpresSion
978 1 74027 800 3, 84pp, $22.00

Mark Willing lives in Melbourne, where he works as a teacher. His poetry has been published in magazines and journals including Verandah, Small Packages, Five Bells, Centoria and Blue Dog.
978 1 74027 704 4, 72pp, $18.50

Crosswinds from the South-east is a fledgling collection of musings on life and death in south-east Queensland. The poet also reflects on the beauty of the natural world and our place in it.
978 1 74027 728 3, 68pp, $18.50

The concept for this book grew while I was commuting between Sydney and the NSW Central Coast, camera and journal close at hand. Misty reflections and images of the countryside, as in the cover photo, are like dream images in the labyrinthine mind, in half sleep, stirred by the motion of train or coach. This concept was intensified by a long train journey in New Zealand, in 2011, expressed in the poem ‘Memories of the Waikato, NZ’, when I retraced a journey and rewrote a poem from when I was a student at Waikato University, NZ.
978 1 74027 790 7, 36pp, $17.00

Neither innocent nor guilty? Poetry, like love, isn’t bound by common sense. It offers a perspective from a place beyond the limits of modern logic, where concepts dissolve in the fullness of the senses. It allows original thoughts and perceptions to take the place of uninvited messages that are imposed on our minds by society and the media, that are perhaps too often taken for granted as undisputed reality. There are seeds of dormant melodies carried on the wind and sensations dawn around us like flowers that grow after the rain. Every experience has an impact, every circumstance induces emotions. Life’s every moment offers a vivid impression. It is the aim of this collection of poems to use the awareness of the vivid impressions left by life’s moments as a guide in exploring the pathways of our souls. Neither Innocent Nor Guilty draws on popular psychology, personal experiences, religious subject matter and existential themes. It is the hope of the author that it is written from a caring perspective, infused with encouragement.
978 1 74027 739 6, 76pp, $18.50