AustLit

'Diane Wahlheim has for many years worked in a culinary world. Her love of all things that tempt the palette and lift the senses has given her a satisfying and fulfilling career. Meandering beneath the layers of a fine food connoisseur, however, has ben a perpetual passion for poetry. Now retired and living in Aldinga Beach, Diane is enjoying the time she has had to take her fondness for rhymes, and other lines, a little further. In this book, her first full collection, she leaves the recipes behind and is, instead, cooking with words.' (Publication summary)

'Within the verses of Growing Up, readers will embark on a journey through sorrow, love, emotions and challenges that shape our daily lives. This collection of raw and emotional poetry delves into the experiences of loss, heartache, friendship and hope, exploring the nature of human relationships with beauty, understanding and empathy. These poems about human experiences celebrate the joy, heartache and the pain of being human. Touching on issues such as suicide, metal illness, lost friendships, drug addiction, war and human endurance, these poems create a space for empathy and understanding in a world that can be dark and fragmented. Growing Up will touch your heart.' (Publication summary)

'‘Libby Sommer has a keen eye for extraordinary insights in the midst of the details of ordinary life, and for the striking verbal expression that captures the moral implications of what she has carefully observed. Hers is poetry that always rewards us with stimulated thought.’ – Barry Spurr, Literary Editor, Quadrant' (Publication summary)

'Warning: do not buy this book if all you want is a boring travel guide. Buy it only if you are interested in personal reflections and observations, mostly sane but some completely insane, history, and the odd poem for good measure, put together in 2022 in the post Covid lockdown era when I travelled from Port Albert to the tip of Cape York and back - about as far south to north as you can get on the Australian mainland.' (Publication summary)

'Midnight Radio explores the complex landscape of intimate attachments, offering nuanced, original perspectives on the ambiguities that pervade them. The collection reflects a clear-eyed intelligence and a sensibility at once ironic and vulnerable. Often conversational in tone, satisfyingly varied, these compact yet multi-layered poems, deeply observed even at their most playful, engage both heart and mind.

'‘There is a hot black nerve running through Midnight Radio which Michael Sariban plays with unnerving lyrical confidence. This is a collection of poetry that gives a fiendish pleasure.’ - Dorothy Porter

'‘These poems glide beneath the eye, the lightness of their surface deceptive. Unapologetically direct, they chart a course through the debris of contemporary culture, mingling intimate reflection and sardonic detachment.’ - Amanda Stewart

'‘The poems are really sharp and clear and very stylish…a multi-pronged investigation of love and passion.’ - Martin Duwell ' (Publication summary)

'‘David Kelly has an uncanny ability to dissect the most mundane moments with unexpected bursts of insight. Laced with David’s bizarre sense of humour, quartet is a collection of poetry like no other. It tantalises the senses and makes you reach deep into your own humanity to reflect upon snippets of time, real or imagined. From the environmental swirl of life in the forest, grasping the message from a dying man’s handshake, memories of an expectant toddler, through to creating a regiment of the elderly with scooter trains, David’s poetry is firing on all four cylinders.’ – Suellen Drysdale, President, Goulburn Valley Writers Group

'‘David Kelly continues his exciting quest to find different ways to write and present poetry. His fourth book quartet shows four of these ways. The first section contains prosaic paragraphs about everyday life in a country town, the second section has poems in the happy, primal voice of a child, the third section contains long descriptive poems about trees, birds and the families of the bush and the final section presents narrative poems about family struggles which read like a poetry novella. Kelly’s poetry focuses on small but resonant details which celebrate aspects of an Australian way of life.’ – Myron Lysenko' (Publication summary)

'Dominic Kirwan’s latest collection of poetry, Spreading the Bad Word, is jaw-droppingly delicious, and I say that as someone who does not usually consider myself a fan of the genre. Like a lot of people, I thought of poetry as the realm of greeting cards and teenage girls, but this is some great, grown-up stuff. Kirwan is a master craftsman of words, an architect that rummages through his vocabulary of nouns, adjectives, and verbs and then links them together to build tantalising towers of emotional intensity that will awe anyone lucky enough to read his finished masterpieces. This collection is not for the faint of heart. Kirwan will often leave the reader breathless as he whips his audience around the corners of his reality. You may never be quite sure if you are wandering through the poet’s own mind or some nightmarish painting, bold in colour and shocking in its subject matter. Either way, you will be enthralled, perhaps a tad frightened, but entirely wanting to follow him down this dark alley and into the next. Each poem is its own chapter of life, some overlapping, but each a spectacular explosion of feeling. Whether addressing the unbearable realities of love, loss, religion, regret and death, Kirwan also uplifts in his unique way on subjects like gratitude and motherhood, and he is guaranteed to shock with his takes on abortion, social media, and loneliness. I consider it an honour to recommend this book to both the poetry geek and the non-believer. Let Kirwan introduce you to his unique world that is intimate, appalling and delectable all at the same time.’ - Grace Noble, English teacher, spectacular commentator extraordinaire' (Publication summary) ​​​​​​​

'Cynthia Sidney Hallam grew up in Lismore and now lives in the Blue Mountains. Her short stories, poems and articles have appeared in magazines and anthologies, and her poems have been performed on stage and read on ABC radio. She has been awarded a Writing Fellowship Degree by the Fellowship of Australian Writers.' (Publication summary)

''Herein, we find poetry replete with eloquence and imagination, with the ages and stages of life, of dreamtime and daytime, heartache and humour. Within this book, we find the work of an artist who loves words, a writer who is in love with Creation itself. Each poem has a sense of story. Each one throbs with life being lived - the deep steady rhythm of our lives going on despite all, the ability of poetry to create light out of darkness, joy out of sorrow. Deep wisdom flows within each poem. Words are stitched like silken threads, to mend you, woven together to enfold you in the world of the poet and her poetry.' - Oriel Parker' (Publication summary) 

'Mark d’Arbon is a retired academic who has spent the greater part of his adult life teaching in a wide range of settings, including a couple of years in Papua New Guinea. He has been writing poetry for many of those forty years, having poems published in a variety of anthologies. The first collection of his own poems was published in 2018, titled Veranda People. This second collection is more reflective and has as its core theme aspects of life and the impact of death, although there is a sufficiently eclectic spread of poems not to make this book so depressing that you have to put it down in order to have a good cry.' (Publication summary)

'Carol Patterson deserves much wider recognition for her brilliant mastery of the short story form. Each story immerses the reader in an entirely different, vividly depicted setting with complex and contrasting characters. Patterson brings these characters to life as they confront a range of human dilemmas and emotional challenges. Her work is superbly crafted with control of syntax, voice and style.’ - Dr Janet Upcher

'‘In these stories, there is a voice of wisdom, a voice of experience, a voice of clarity. The author has tremendous sensitivity to the characters, which allows her to breathe true insight into every scenario. They are the kind of people one may meet in day-to-day life and often encourage us to pause and reflect on our own experiences in comparable scenarios. There is a dynamic interplay between the physical surroundings and history of each narrative with the impact on the characters’ thoughts and reflections. Above all, the writing has grace and elegance.’ - Dr Paul Goodey-Adevisyan'  (Publication summary)