(Publication summary)

'This new volume from Penelope Layland absorbingly quizzes memory, while questioning our apprehension of time and the importance of deep human connections. These poems explore mourning and loss in a way that is salutary, affirmative, meditative and uplifting, subtly refracting our common understandings and our claims on knowledge. In these works the ghosted quotidian, like a long filigree of light, reaches out to remind us of what we value and care for.' (Publication summary)

'This gripping new verse novel charts the course of the espionage scandal which rocked sleepy Canberra and the nation in the mid 1950s.

'In April 1954 Australia woke up to discover that Volodya Petrov,an attaché in the Russian embassy in Canberra, was also a colonel in the KGB and was planning to defect. The Petrov Poems charts the unfolding web of intrigue between Petrov, the embassy staff, and his contacts in the West. And the crucial role of his wife Dusya, thrust into a terrible crisis of conscience as the result of her husband’s actions and her past personal history.' (Publisher's blurb)

'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.' (Publication summary)