AustLit

'A meditation on living in a post-religious world, this little book is packed with big ideas about doubt, faith and redemption for the ‘delicate formation of faults’ that runs through human nature.*

'Reading these droplets of insight about everyday life is a practice in mindfulness offering the opportunity to lift the veil and gaze at eternity.

'‘A mantra that will keep us in one piece’, as the poet Kim Cheng Boey writes, this book allows us to dwell in uncomfortable ideas.

'Prayers of a Secular World is a compendium of meditations from over eighty poets including the well-loved Cate Kennedy, Judith Beveridge, Chris Wallace-Crabbe and Mark Tredinnick, award-winning poets such as Christine Paice, Lisa Jacobson, Debbi Hamilton and Lesley Lebkowicz.

'From their personal experience of our contemporary world, poets such as Ron Pretty, Robyn Rowland, David Brooks and many more have created a language of encounter that is universally resonant. Their blessings and epiphanies, insights and concerns, are the prayer that lives in all of us.' (Publication summary)

'Falling and Flying: Poems of Ageing is the first collection of its kind to be published in Australia. The editors have selected a broad range of Australian poems which explore the universal experience and effects of ageing. Whether the poets are witnessing themselves or their parents and friends succumb to the years, they speak with great precision and insight into illness, frailty, death, loss, grief, and retirement as well as the joys and the wisdom that late maturity can bring. There is humour as well as sadness in this fine and important collection, which includes the work of some of Australia’s best loved poets, a volume to be cherished by readers of any age.' (Publication summary)