AustLit

'Cast off deliciously into the night. Delicious, provocative, uncompromising. Anna Brook's poetry speaks powerfully of sensualilty, vulnerability, and of delight in intimate meetings with nature.

'On the threshold we purchase a nip of designer danger. With wit and irony, Jenny Weight flies you beyond the comfort zone into outer space then navigates the way back to urban space. A journey with attitude.

'Your words rattle around me like gravel on a roof. You'll enjoy the sharp, satisfying impact of David Cookson's images as he provides a lively and humorous commentary on people and events. There's sensuality here too; tomatoes never tasted so good.' (Publication summary)

'Ioana Petrescu's poems are sophisticated, witty and eloquent, using elements of play in both a post-modern way and with enough sense of particular personality to communicate with the reader, and not to create distance. She is obviously familiar with international contemporary writing styles, but it is this sense of personality that finally wins over.

'Maureen Vale writes from within a well recognised world of here and now. Whether she deals with plums (and Eve with a preference for them over apples), 'Figs', 'Going Home', or even exotic subjects like 'Sergei Krikalov Ponders Ten Months in Space' and 'Hypatia's Last Drive', Maureen Vale's poetry is rich with visual images, sense perceptions and a stoic endurance of almost visionary dimensions.

'Julian Zytnik's collection has the nervous edginess of life today, flashing with as many references and innuendos as a TV commercial yet with an underlying regionalism that defines the particularities of place. South Australian place. Quick as a flicked magazine, yet pervaded by an underlying hurt and vulnerability, these poems flex their muscles and reveal their dangerous inner tenderness.' (Publication summary) 

'John De Laine uses contemporary language and images in poems that require the readers to dig deep within themselves. For those willing, the rewards are there. The soft sweetness of his collection's title is mocked by the tartness of the poems, wherein most relationships are full of tension and hurt, and where introspective moments bring no calm.

'Alison Manthorpe's poems about the sea and sailors and their people on shore are strong and evocative. She has an acute ear for the rhythms appropriate to the poem's moment. Her poems of observation and memory avoid the trap of mere description. Instead she reflects on and draws from the experiences recorded in the poem.

'Ray R. Tindale's collection begins with a lush mid-life crisis food-and-seduction sequence that has something in common with an up-market cooking show. Then follows a love-in-the-garden sequence written with similar ease and delight. A group of farm and outback poems are freshly imagined and keenly observed.' (Publication summary)

'The Windmill's Song is a well-grounded convincing evocation of childhood, of a particular past. There is colour, movement, and human interaction, a real sense of life and the details of living. Elaine Barker writes with a relaxed tone and an easy discipline of diction.

'Tess Driver achieves a quiet intimate tone through well-judged silences and understatement. Kite Lady is an atmospheric collection ranging from land to sea yet focused by a deft use of detail and crisp visual images.

'The poems in David Mortimer's Fine Rain Straight Down are intellectually decisive and linguistically playful - aural, ironic and surprising. A good sense of rhythm and timing enhance this richly varying collection.' (Publication summary)

'Jill Gloyne's collection of fine poems, Peeling Onions, sloughs the paper-thin skin off life then, layer after layer, pares it down to the heart ... There is beauty, grace and style in these poems and images that fix in the mind's eye.

'Judith Ahmed's poems in Crescent Moon Caught Me opened doors to a way of life and living about which I knew very little and offered a point of connection, the opportunity of knowing and understanding ... She explores traditions and rituals in images that startle with their beauty, shock with their ferocity and sing in rhythms new and powerful.

'In her collection, Scoffing Gnocchi, Linda Uphill offers a bright young voice that bounces over the uneven, sometimes chaotic terrain encountered as life moves into young adulthood. There is wonder here and humour, pain and confusion. As the young say, 'I can relate to that.'' (Publication summary)

'Each year, the works of three emerging poets are selected and published in the Friendly Street New Poets series. The 2009 publication includes Snatching Time, by M.L. Emmett; The Boy Full of Broken Promise, by Rob Hardy; and Airbone, by Thom Sullivan.' (Publication summary)

'John Pfitzner - Fence Music

ethereal tones, luminously pure,/ high in the cold sky of an outback night,/ the scrape of wind on corrugated iron,/ the noon throb of sun-steeped air

John Pfitzner achingly connects the spirit to the land in poems borne of thought, experience and deep consideration. Find solace and hope in his words.

'Gareth Roi Jones - Gunyah Healing

a farm is a brutal place/ but it reinforces/ life either goes on/ / or it doesn't

Gareth Roi Jones' quick wit touches the making and mending of relationships, turning surprisingly and lightly at each poem's end. Read your own stories in his lines.

'Rachael Mead - Sliding Down the Belly of the World

Nine degrees south of the Equator,/ I'm perched on/ the full belly of the world

Rachael Mead plots daily concerns of home and abroad, ranging across the globe in wild imaginative conversations with self and others. In her poems you can bask and be illuminated.' Publication summary)

'Wolf Ghosts – Alys Jackson ‘This is highly visual work. It dances with effective short lines and shows an ability to hook the reader with a strong closing image or idea. Wolf Ghosts frequently takes the natural world, and especially animals, as its subject. It depicts that world as vulnerable one minute and threatening or, at least, indifferent to humans, at the next. The landscape revealed might devour us if we are not careful. If there is sometimes a sombre atmosphere in these poems, edged with a sense of impending loss, the effect is not so much bleak and hopeless as thought-provoking. It is a timely approach and a well-wrought collection.’

'Shifting Viewpoints – Julia Wakefield ‘This collection draws its inspirations, its reference points, from many sources and subjects. The author seems restless, looking not to be pinned to one style or a predictable opinion. That elusiveness keeps the poems fresh and is a large part of its charm, with narrating perspectives that challenge reader expectations. There is darkness in its humour, delivered with a wink in depictions that can sometimes be whimsical or obviously surreal. The work includes sharp portrayals of nature, celebrating it and weighing up our place in it. Shifting Viewpoints does what it says on the tin, while offering a welcome adventurous outlook in its scope and multiple perspectives.’

'Finding Their Voices – Sharon Foulkes ‘The poems in Finding Their Voices often address moments of stress that ask key questions of the reader, explicitly or not. They vary widely in focus, for example from the domestic arena, such as a fraught ‘hand-over’ of a child on a custody weekend, to a catastrophic encounter with a bushfire as it engulfs a farm. Other topics captured with precision involve life in an industrial country town and the joie de vivre of childhood. The language shifts between a more determinedly poetic voice and plainer speech, the latter often being delivered in a diaristic manner. The poems are character-laden and the richer for it.’ (Publication summary)

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