AustLit

'Aussie rock icon Billy Ordain is dead. But how and when he died is more than anyone can tell.

'Five people who knew Billy tell their stories of him, charting his ascent to fame ― from learning music as a suburban teenager in the 60s, to his apotheosis as the most lauded, biggest selling artist in the country. Five people who knew him remember loving him, helping him, being stepped on, ignored, betrayed.

'Five people who knew him all saw him leave this world, but in different ways and in different decades. Amid the noise and hype of celebrity culture, in the mirrored madhouse of the media, who’s to say what’s really real?

'A bitter industry satire, a vast human comedy, an experiment in tragedy, A Minor Fifth looks through multiple viewpoints at the legends we construct around all-too-human individuals. Funny, moving and mind-bending, it is a love letter to Australian rock music.' (Publication summary)

'In 1980, Neil Murray arrived in Papunya, 260 kilometres northwest of Alice Springs, with a guitar in hand. 'My peers were all hellbent on getting to Europe as soon as they could. I always had this desire to head bush, I felt there was something of the real Australia that was out there. I felt a lot of that was inextricably tied up with Aboriginal people. I felt that intuitively -- I wanted to go and work and live with Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory.'

'There he formed the iconic Warumpi Band with Luritja brothers Sammy and Gordon Butcher and Yolngu singer George Rrurrambu. One result of this collaboration was the anthemic song 'My Island Home'. From Papunya to Sydney, and on to Melbourne, Alice Springs, and Darwin, and a musical career alongside the Warumpis and Archie Roach, Shane Howard and Uncle Banjo Clarke, before returning home to Tjapwurrung country in western Victoria, Heavy Precious charts Neil Murray's journey in reconciling profound loss -- both cultural and personal -- while creating new and meaningful ways to belong.

'Heavy Precious is a lyrical and emotionally raw meditation on music, love, identity, and place from one of Australia's finest songwriters, offering a timely insight for anyone seeking a deeper relationship to this land.' (Publication summary)

'What happens when the future falls as dark as your past?

When all that you have seduced and betrayed, rises up to drown you.

'Pat Pinnock is about to find out.

'Pinnock is a Judas Boy — a private schoolboy gone to seed. He’s lost his job as a political staffer. He sleeps in the garage of his estranged wife. He has finally run out of friends and must face his accusers — both the living and the dead.

'Judas Boys is the eagerly-awaited new novel from Joel Deane: a searing de profundis that reads like the secret history behind today’s political headlines. Deane brings the aftermath of professional catastrophe, personal betrayal, and public disgrace to life with a poet’s ear for the human voice fractured in extremis.' (Publication summary)

'In A Dictionary of the English Language, Dr Johnson defines ‘foul’ as ‘full of gross humours.’ It can also mean discoloured, obscene, and profane. Yet the phrase ‘a foul wind’ is specifically nautical: it’s a wind that blows against the direction you want to go — that sends you off-course and into misadventure.

'Isn’t that poetry, though, pushing back against your intention and will? In this new collection, Justin Clemens finds himself lost, wrecked, and washed up on the isle of the damned. He discovers a world of undrinkable Dummheit, stuffed to the gills with cyberpreneurs and pseudonatural secretaries, downsizing corporations and corruption taskforces, ‘80s rappers and ‘90s drugs, planetary plague and terra nullius.

'With a nod to Restoration drama and contemporary philosophy, A Foul Wind is a tour-de-force of morality, politics, and love.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Trap Landscape charts a course, trick-riding through poetic topography. From cubist paddocks approaching Paris, past council roadworks, and on to the terraced slopes of Hvar, Nicholas Powell surveys the sacred miscellany to find tulips in the chimney, the scenic peaks of the landfill, and rifles in the maize.

'Word play and vernacular collide to re-imagine language in a dreamscape that is by turns pastoral and surreal, ominous and absurd.

'It’s all fun and games until you’re caught in the Trap Landscape.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Memory Book: Portraits of Older Australians in Poetry and Watercolours shares and celebrates the fascinating life stories of everyday Australians.

'Based on one-on-one interviews with forty-five participants, the fifteen poets involved in this project have shaped poems that provide unique and lasting remembrances of the experiences, memories and reflections of members of our older generations.

'Some poems focus on a significant moment, while others provide a wider life narrative. The poems capture important stories of travel and work, family and milestones, achievements and struggles; they provide humble advice to younger generations, learned through circumstance, curiosity, or necessity.

'The poems are paired with watercolour portraits by artist Sierra McManus.' (Publication summary)

'At the age of twenty-four, Dimity Ware received a kidney transplant. Her doctors told her she could never have children and would probably die in her thirties. In response, she announced her lesbianism, left her husband, and gave birth to a son.

'Ianto Ware revisits his childhood in suburban Adelaide, where his mother — single parent, lesbian feminist, and ardent socialist — waged a four-decade war on her conservative neighbourhood, primarily through the medium of gardening.

'Blending the loving wisdom of Ray Gaita, the emotional honesty of Jeanette Winterson, and the humour of Gerald Durrell, this is part family memoir, part history of working class life, and part homage to suburban eccentricity.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Something is terribly wrong. The news lurches between horror show and parody. Aeroplanes disappear from radar screens. The Holocene obliterates itself.

'Hot Take confronts opinion culture in the attention economy, love in the age of Tinder, politics in the age of Brexit and Trump. It will stay with you long after the think pieces are forgotten.'  (Publication abstract)

 'This book continues Brendan Ryan's exploration of place and belonging that resonate in country towns. From the lives of farmers, abattoir workers, and dog walkers to the history of Aboriginal dispossession; from a tour of the communities of the Mt Noorat Football League in Victoria's isolated Western District to moments of wonder on back country roads celebrated with gentle irony. Here is a view of the country that is both contemporary and wry. Lyrical and rich in narrative power, this is a collection that dismantles the idealised rural pastoral with an empathetic and incisive voice.' (Publication summary)

'Australia has a rich history of feminist poetry but there is no one kind of feminist voice.

'Each of the seventy new poems commissioned for this anthology cuts its own path through language. Together, their politics are restless, inextricably tied to the now.' (Publication summary)

'In 2012 poet and writer Joel Deane suffered a stroke. Suddenly he was a poet without language. Year of the Wasp tracks Deane’s journey to rediscover his poetic voice.

From these deeply personal origins Deane’s third poetry collection rises to confront the realities of politics and culture, language and love in contemporary Australia. It is a journey of poetic transfiguration that produces a work of unrivalled power, emotional intensity, and insight.' (Publication summary)

'Shy and bespectacled Russell Mockridge was the black sheep of Australian cycling and also its greatest all-round champion. He dominated both the track and road - at the time of his death he was the reigning national sprint, pursuit, and road race champion. His race record in the legendary Melbourne to Warrnambool stood for nearly twenty-five years.

'At the 1952 Olympics he won two gold medals in one afternoon. His first forays into European racing, where he won the Paris Grand Prix and Six-Day event and completed both Paris-Roubaix (finishing behind Fausto Coppi and Jacques Anquetil) and the brutal 1955 Tour de France, hinted at even greater glory.

'In May 1958 Russell Mockridge started to write this book, the story of his life as a racing cyclist. On September 13, 1958, while competing in a road race on the outskirts of Melbourne, he was killed. Intelligent, candid, and inspirational, My World On Wheels is the forgotten story of Australia's finest cyclist ever.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Small Town Soundtrack continues Brendan Ryan's exploration of place and belonging that resonate in country towns.

'From the lives of farmers, abattoir workers, and dog walkers to the history of aboriginal dispossession; from a tour of the communities of the Mt Noorat Football League in Victoria's isolated Western District to moments of wonder on back country roads celebrated with gentle irony. Here is a view of the country that is both contemporary and wry.

'Lyrical and rich in narrative power Small Town Soundtrack dismantles the idealized rural pastoral with an empathetic and incisive voice.' (Publication summary)

Women knit at the foot of the guillotine. Hundreds of blackbirds tumble suddenly from the sky. Red Riding Hood's grandmother speaks from the belly of the wolf. Santa Lucia offers you her eyes on a platter. These poems present a panorama, by turns historical, mythical, and modern, of horrors and absurdities both familiar and obscure.

''Perhaps not fox nor axe, but something gives us chase' - and the only thing more difficult than bearing witness is turning away.' (Publication summary)

'In his latest collection, Liam Ferney focuses on the deep contradictions at the heart of modern life. Content is a hand grenade tossed into the middle of polite society.

'Ferney uses the argot of politics and the internet to tackle religion, war, love and late capitalism. This is fast paced poetry that is explosive, critical, and engaged.' (Publication summary)

'Little is known about the French Tasmanian colony of la Ville de Baudin. Less still about its most mysterious colonist, Henri Maurice Claudet.

'For the first time, The Diemenois presents the correct and true account of the sensational escape, seclusion, and cruel demise of one of history's most infamous men. A tale of intrigue, blackmail, conspiracy, and murder.

'In this brilliant stretch of the imagination, JW Clennett brings an alternative history of the early Australian colony to life as a stunning new graphic novel.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Devious Intimacy combines a sly, playful wit with a melancholic tenderness to navigate the complex terrain of difficult feelings. Vickery's poems move effortlessly between the private world of love and sexuality to wider forms of connection, teasing out how past histories and literature underscore contemporary human bonds and how we imagine ourselves in light of neighbours, nationhood, and the environment.' (Publication summary)