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‘...an outstanding achievement that will, with its skill and elegance, deeply enrich Australian poetry and whoever reads it.’ Judges’ citation, 2013 NSW Premier’s Literary Award for Poetry. Ali Cobby Eckermann, a Yankunytjatjara/Kokatha poet, is at the forefront of Australian Indigenous poetry. Inside My Mother is both a political and personal collection, angry and tender, propelled by the need to remember, yet brimming with energy and vitality – qualities that distinguished her previous, prize-winning verse novel, Ruby Moonlight. Tributes to country, to her elders, and to the animals and spirits that inhabit the landscape, coupled with the rhythms of mourning and celebration that pulse through the poems, make this a moving and personal collection. Grief is deeply felt and vividly portrayed in poems such as ‘Inside My Mother’ and ‘Lament’. There is defiance and protest in ‘Clapsticks’ and ‘I Tell You True’. In the final section there is a marked generational shift as the elders begin to pass away and the poet as grandmother comes to accept her rightful place as matriarch.
Like his earlier book, Before I Forget, 80 Poems is the compilation of a life. The number of poems is significant, Jacobs is at once celebrating and lamenting his 80th birthday. Consistent with that, the poems among the 80 focus on the function and content of memory, and the uncertainty of life, particularly at advanced age. Throughout the book there is a spiritual tone of faith in the goodness of life.
A musical, magical, resilient volume from the first Native American Poet Laureate of the United States. In these poems, the joys and struggles of the everyday are played against the grinding politics of being human. Beginning in a hotel room in the dark of a distant city, we travel through history and follow the memory of the Trail of Tears from the bend in the Tallapoosa River to a place near the Arkansas River. Stomp dance songs, blues, and jazz ballads echo throughout. Lost ancestors are recalled. Resilient songs are born, even as they grieve the loss of their country. Called a "magician and a master" (San Francisco Chronicle), Joy Harjo is at the top of her form in Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings. Finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize
Candy Royalle was a spoken word poet par excellence, presenting her words and ideas with dynamism and passion. In a short 37 years of life she made a profound impact on readers and audiences. Her death unleashed sorrow and love. Candy's anticipation of the release of this book makes all of us regretful that it didn't come earlier so that she could enjoy her arrival into a traditional publishing form which was sure to increase her following. A trillion tiny awakenings is uncompromisingly direct in its language and set of interests about the world and the politics that impact every aspect of our lives. These poems also carry love. Candy Royalle invokes tenderness and care in this startling new book.
**Winner, 2019 Western Australian Premier's Book Awards, Daisy Utemorrah Award** **Winner, 2021 Australia Books Industry Awards, Small Publishers' Children's Book of the Year** **Winner, 2021 Queensland Literary Awards, Children's Book Award** **Winner, 2021 Speech Pathology, Australia Books of the Year Awards, Eight to ten Years** **Shortlisted, 2022 NSW Premier's Literary Awards, Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children's Literature** **Shortlisted, 2022 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature, Children's Literature Awards** **Shortlisted, 2022 Ena Noel Award, The IBBY Australia Encouragement Award for a Young Emerging Writer or Illustrator** **Shortlisted, 2021 Children's Book Council of Aus...
not in Aus, mate bad things don't happen here our beaches are open they are not places where bloodied mattresses burn Throatis the explosive second poetry collection from award-winning Mununjali Yugambeh writer Ellen van Neerven. Exploring love, language and land, van Neerven flexes their distinctive muscles and shines a light on Australia's unreconciled past and precarious present with humour and heart. Van Neerven is unsparing in the interrogation of colonial impulse, and fiercely loyal to telling the stories that make us who we are.
No longer knowing which is sweeter the cherry or the feel of the word in my mouth Fingertip of the Tongue explores the texture, tone, taste, and touch of language. These are poems that feel their way through word and world with tongue and ear and fingertip. 'In Fingertip of the Tongue we find a poetry of close observation of people and everyday objects, finding in them new and deeper implications. These poems are sometimes whimsical, sometimes deeply personal, always satisfying. Sarah Rice displays a fascination with form and a great skill in finding the startlingly apt word, the evocative insight. Hers is a poetry of mind and heart.' Ron Pretty 'Sarah Rice writes poems of astonishing grace....
On a daylight street in Minneapolis Minnesota, a Black man is asphyxiated - by callous knee of an officer, by cruel might of state, and under crushing weight of colony. In Melbourne, the body of another woman has been found - this time, after catching a late tram home. The Atlantic has run out of the English alphabet, when christening hurricanes this season. The earth is on fire - from the redwoods of California, to Australia's east coast. The sea draws back, and tsunamis lash out in Samoa and Sumatra. Water rises in Sulawesi and Nagasaki. Bloated cod are surfacing all along the Murray-Darlin. The virus arrives, and the virus thrives. Authorities seal the public housing towers up, and truck in one cop to every five residents. Notre Dame is ablaze - the cathedral spire blackened, and teetering. Out in Biloela, the deportation vans have arrived. Every Friday, in cities all across the world, children are walking out of school. The wolves are circling. The wolves are circling. These poems speak of the world that is, and sing for a world that may one day be.
Sydney Spleen takes Charles Baudelaire's concept of spleen as melancholy with no apparent cause, characterised by a disgust with everything - and combines it with a contemporary sense of irony so as to articulate the causes of our doom and gloom: corporate rapacity, climate change, disaster capitalism, the plague, neo-colonialism, fake news, fascism, and how to raise kids in a world fast becoming obsolete. The backdrop of this collection of poems is sparkling Sydney and its screens, through which the poet mainlines global angst. Fitch's 'spleen poems', with their radical use of form and tone, are as much an aesthetic experience as a literary one - translation becomes homage becomes satire becomes song; essays become lyrics become rants become dreams. What is a poem when 'no one believes in the future now anyway'? Nor is the collection lacking in humour. Sydney Spleen mocks everything in its crystal glass, yet still finds real moments of connection to celebrate. 'Fitch's poems are not interested in slowly unfolding a metaphor or arriving at a singular meaning. Instead, they ask you to cling on for your life.' -- Sarah Holland-Batt
Siarad isa Welsh word, meaning to talk, to speak. In this collection of spoken word,prose poetry and micro-fiction, Reid speaks to the memories and emotions thatmove us through decades, continents and cultures. The collection pulses withimages of stars and stray dogs, highways with no horizon and mothers withfading memories. Reid's background as a performer and playwright shines in thiscollection of works that are as bold as they are tender, begging to be shouted,spoken, whispered many times over. 'Psychedelic. Startling. Alive. This book takes you to places younever imagined you'd go, and some places you've already been, but thought youwere alone when you were there. Caroline Reid is a fellow traveller in achaotic world. She tells a woman's story, but it is the story of us all.' -- Donna Ward, She I Dare Not Name: A Spinster's Meditations onLife. 'Caroline Reid's writing illuminates the mundane and the ordinaryas spectacular and powerful.' -- Rosslyn Prosser, University of Adelaide