Two women stepped from the steamship Orient onto Australian soil on a hot December day in 1879. Beatrice Beauchamp epitomises the younger middle-class English woman settler unused to the unpleasant. Yet she combats tragedy and meets challenge and difference with a level of equanimity not commonly expected from one with a genteel upbringing. We ......
'These poems about friendship and belonging - I've had them with me for just two weeks and yet I feel as much at home with them as with friends I've known all my life. Meg Mooney has the language to speak of silences and centres - and of breathing and heartbeats the odd fact that one keeps growing older - and of country and time and how to listen ......
'The Edge of Winter is a remarkable achievement by one of our oldest living poets. The poems reveal an inquisitive mind fascinated by the physical world including particularly the ocean and the Merri Merri Creek in Melbourne's north. Connie Barber interrogates herself and the world through which she moves with a clean-edged honesty leavened ......
'With its beer-drenched Blundstones cricket balls retrieved from neighbour's backyards misbehaving pastor's kids and crabs plucked from the Moyne river O'Reilly's poetry collects and curates a series of vernacular objects and experiences that comprise life in Australia and beyond. From the streets of Ballarat to the dry highways of West Texas ......
'City of Stars is grounded in a vision of place one always close to home residing just outside the front door. It is full of the presence and seasons of the city of Frankston Victoria where 35 000 people live their daily lives. In this unique collection poets affirm place as their primary source of inspiration: familiar streets stations and ......
'Under a bright Australian sun the fascinating tale of a European life comes to light. In a sequence of incisive poems Belinda Broughton narrates the voice of Ervin Janek - Hungarian artist and poet son of a nun and 'a certain Jewish man' - who makes his 'own path' out of abandonment and poverty through streets where he can hold his own ......
'Enjoy a rewarding trip to India with Jen Gibson. In poems exotic yet familiar women sweep peaks rise spider webs quiver with a footfall birds call and children chant. But in evoking the full sweep of her Indian experience we hear of greedy cities lethal childbirth and child brides. Jen Gibson's eye is keen. Her voice is clear. The poems are ......
'The poems of An Indrawn Breath travel the continent and beyond - through road trips wilderness visual art crime scenes haircuts and the complex landscapes of the heart. Telford's voice is intimate poised and compassionate. She knows poetry "is a precious metal / only mallets and hammers / can fashion its curves". But her tools are ......
Adèle Ogiér Jones has worked internationally for more than two decades much of it in development more recently in regions affected by conflict. From 2004 to 2006 when these poems were written she lived in Afghanistan leading the education program of the Aga Khan Foundation in northern and central provinces. Political themes are common in ......
