AustLit

'Solitary travellers and a couple encounter Nina, an eloquent storyteller, on their travels through Spain, France and Italy. She entrances them all with her tales, which prompts her fellow travelling companions to share their own stories.

'A handsome young man from Staten Island, who believes that life forms exist in other galaxies, vows to never work in an office again and travels by container ship to a commune in Italy. A lonely postal worker from Łódź takes home and reads the most interesting love letters, often becoming convinced a relationship needs his intervention, before delivering them the next day. A woman named Pauline calls herself Kim because her surname is Nowak. Depressed about turning forty, she mysteriously disappears from her own birthday party. Told by people on a journey, these are stories – rich with unexpected wisdoms – of lives in transit.

'Travelling Companions is charming, amusing and philosophical – a wholly original exploration of what it means to honour our strangest dreams and disappointments. It is both a confrontation with, and a sweet diversion from, these, the darkest of times.'

Source : publisher's blurb

Circus is a collection of 104 poems written during 1983 and 1984. It is published here [in Dotlit] as a complete collection for the first time. Some of the individual poems have been published before: in The Bulletin Literary Supplement and in Network (The Fringe Network Anthology).

The suggested linkages within these poems are in no way meant to be prescriptive, opening up, instead, many alternative pathways through these poems. You might like to read the poems in order (as numbered by the author), or follow your own intuitive route through the work, using suggested links (or not) as you wish. - Dotlit