AustLit

'A collection, written in English and Scots, that explores immigration, home and place.

''When I first left my home, the gnawing ache for all I'd left behind - family, friends, my land, my whole life - made me numb and thrawn. Weeping and sobbing - bubblin an greetin, as you would call it in Scotland - would have been too wet and hand-wringy. What I felt was bone-dry and primal; I wanted to drop to my knees, throw my head back and howl. I pined like an animal, without tears.' — Alison Flett

''The people could be poet, family, reader or all of us on this drowning, burning earth. The present could be this moment, or a past so intensely remembered, or a future so powerfully imagined that past, present and future are simultaneously here. We are with a poet who knits intricate patterns of sound and image, line to line.' — Duncan McLean'  (Publication summary)

'In this new collection by a seasoned master, Kim Cheng Boey moves between Singapore and Australia, youth and middle age â" places and times rendered in vivid, sensory detail â" to give a haunting exploration of memory and the emigrant experience: departures and arrivals; family and home; exile, longing and loss.'  (Publication summary)

(Publication summary)

'Eh? You want bodies, blood, sex, gore, damning gods, raw uppercuts?

'Why, yes. Pooja Mittal Biswas welcomes you into the ring of identity and the hunt for an honest and rapier self.

'Glove up.' (Publication summary) 

'The author's playfulness is to the fore in this strange, charming book. It is a game which invites the reader to roll the dice, take a card from the deck, gain points, lose a turn, and, one way or another, advance around a notional game board: a pirate's world of exotic ports, risky encounters, escapades, wonders and the routine of shipboard life, always in the presence of the moody, changeable sea.' (Publication summary)

'Drawing on media such as musical notation, Carruthers writes in vertical verse stanzas that can be read in any direction; recalling the the palindromic poems in the Chinese poetic tradition, they challenge the dominant linear mode of thinking and writing in the West. Z book 3 is the third book in the AXIS series, a lifelong project begun in 2011.' (Publication summary)

'This book is a testament to the idea that if you keep writing, something will form. Some of those shapes will be emojis, goop stains, paper cuts and everyday geometries. Trash and art are incestuous lovers, and I’m hoarding their offspring.

'I’m an ugly talker, screeching like a pissbaby. I know that this book could be described as confessional – a gendered accusation, and a dirty word when trying to evade the constraints of both gender and genre. I’ve never read a poem that didn’t confess anything, didn’t betray the heart of its author. And I’ve never read a cringe-free poem, nor do I want to.

'I was once deemed a basket case, and now that basket is filled with astro fluff, orbited by spinning tornado cows. Now my basket is hitched to a unicycle, discarded at the clown orgy. Now my basket is empty again.

'I’m a naïve artist and a foolish poet. I eat MILF cereal and I have no money. I don’t know how to talk to anyone, much less an imagined reader. I cut and scissor in equal measures, and I encourage you to tear this book apart if you see fit.

'I hope you fall into something sticky within these pages, or lose your keys, or your marbles.

'You are wonderful. Taste my spit.'

Source: Cordite Books.

'From the first moment I listened to stories about the night sky, I fell in love with astronomy and physics. Not just the stars or galaxies but also the why and how of it all.

'What happened before the Big Bang? What are we made of? How will the universe end? I am not a scientist, just eternally curious and have made scientific research the basis for a great deal of my poetry. The cosmos is endlessly fascinating. And writeable.

'I have been fortunate enough to work alongside inspiring scientists and have read and listened to many more. Scientists regularly and successfully use vivid storytelling and poetics, using metaphor to weave into their factual narrative. It can be an indispensable tool, helping us understand something like Newton’s second law of thermodynamics or dark matter.

'Sometimes, adding abstraction (poetry) on top of abstraction (difficult to understand scientific concepts) can feel like you’re going on a side quest. In those splinters of time, I hope you stay with me.

'Physicist Niels Bohr said, ‘What is it that we humans depend on? We depend on our words. We are suspended in language. Our task is to communicate experience and ideas to others.’

'With this, I am humbly grateful and thankful to be suspended in language with you.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'After my parents’ dinner parties, I’d pour dregs from wine bottles into saucers for the fairies – white wine for the good ones, red for the wicked. The red always disappeared faster, which I took as proof that naughty people have more fun. I didn’t really believe that fairies drank the wine but equally, I didn’t not believe either.

'As a parent, I am tuning back to that curious magic of childhood; the naive ambivalence that accepts the existence of tooth fairies and flying reindeer; the unadulterated wonder at new things; the unexpected grace of an ibis in flight; the dinosaur shriek of a sulphurcrested cockatoo; the shocking weirdness of a Gymea lily in bloom; the otherworldly-warble of currawongs as dusk settles in.

'Yet, as wonder flows back into my daily life, so too does the creeping realisation that we are living in a time of overlapping and escalating environmental crises. What stories will prepare my son for a future that frightens me? For me, there is no overarching narrative or truth, no heroic figure who will lead us to salvation from this mess we are in. Instead, sense is made from paying attention to the assemblages of people and other animals who we move among on a damaged planet. I read and write and draw to make sense of a world I no longer recognise.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.