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Australian Poetry
by Gleebooks
Australian Poetry
Keeper of the Ritual by Shey Marque ($23, PB)
Shey Marque’s debut full collection is wonderfully responsive to the complexity & sensuality of ocean, bush, animals, art & human relationships. The poems are always wryly intelligent, self-aware & carefully crafted, across an impressive variety of forms. She brings to this rich collection the forensic eye, curiosity & insight of both the scientist and the artist, revealing how much they have in common.
A William Maidment Garland by John Watson ($25, PB)
This is a collection of poems and prose pieces which celebrate and memorialize the life of Bill Maidment (1924– 2005), a former teacher in the English Department at the USyd who influenced a couple of generations of writers, thinkers & intellectuals. There’s a birthday poem, a Golden Wedding, a celebratory lament, two discursions designed to beguile the fever room, and a chapter by chapter synopsis (with limericks) of Thomas Love Peacock’s late, late, last & most lyrical novel. In each instance the presence of Bill Maidment as mentor is orchestrated in Watson’s allusive manner—’from beautifully poised meditations in the manner of Wallace Stevens through to light-hearted satire.’
Windfall by Greg McLaren ($25, PB)
In his 6th book, Greg McLaren finds his stories in those of others, and others’ in his. These poems seek, suspect & deepen connection; they nod, wink & pay, in nearly equal parts, homage & fromage. Windfall includes responses & asides to, and satires of, contemporary writers, & also sees McLaren further exploring his interest in classical Chinese poetry. He takes these poets for a drive through new contexts, reimagining their poems, eking out connection across culture, history, experience & space into a voice that is shared & his own.
Neat Snakes by Martin Langford ($25, PB)
Like many poets, Martin Langford has long been intrigued by the genre of aphorism. The ‘neat snakes’ collected here have been compiled over many decades. An alternative way of articulating what might otherwise be explored in poems, they nevertheless retain the poem’s elegance, and its characteristic tension between emotion and idea.
Autobiochemistry by Tricia Dearborn ($23, PB)
‘Dearborn’s trademark finely balanced, masterfully honed poems are vitally engaged with the world, and with our cycles of love & loss within it. Fans of hers will be delighted to find here the full-length versions of both her 22-poem sequence for the elements, Autobiochemistry, and the shorter but no less fabulous sequence on perimenopause, The change: some notes from the field. Dearborn understands that even a bald fact (scientific, medical, biographical), held & tilted just so in the right light, can sing with the resonance of dream. There are also nightmares, as she deals deftly & devastatingly with childhood sexual trauma & the never-ending work of healing. A crucial & timely book.’—Melinda Smith
A little book of unspoken history by Elif Sezen ($25, PB)
Australian-Turkish poet & visual artist, Elif Sezen navigates physical & metaphysical spheres, conjuring multilayered historical & imaginative narratives. Memories of domestic disruption act as a point of departure in these poems, as she charts an ethereal personal odyssey—travelling through time, greeting souls in existential landscapes, illuminating extremity in inner and outer worlds, pivoting between vulnerability and strength, the sayable and the unsayable.
The short story of you and I Richard J Allen
From long narrative lines to fine-boned, lyrical loops & ties that bind these poems into place, Richard James Allen has taken risks with language that mark this as his most adventurous and significant book to date—his subject is being itself, and the way our biological and mental dimensions interact, with human intelligence and love being the unifying forces for this interaction. ($23, PB)
Towards Light & Other Poems by Sarah Day ($25, PB)
Light, as a physical and metaphorical entity recurs in many of the poems in this new collection by Sarah Day. Light makes its presence felt in these poems as a source of illumination and grace, it is also the means by which the flaws and discrepancies of the present and past are highlighted: ‘Sarah Day is a poet of wonderful attentiveness. She notices everything, persuading us, as readers, that she has seen and heard the living
