'Winner of the prestigious Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize, Jaya Savige’s latecomers is a first collection of poems by one of Australia’s most exciting young poets. Lively, playful, and always intelligent, Savige’s poems show an awareness of place, of the inescapability of history, and a personal commitment to the precision of language. ‘The poems in latecomers go beyond what we take for granted these days in a first collection: refinement of language and cadence, allusiveness, wit. Moving easily through abstract wonders and the streets of the inner city, they return for nourishment to family and ‘the Island’ – Bribie, its fishing-life and beaches – as a test always of what is native and endures’ – DAVID MALOUF' (Publication summary)