Cirrus@Austlit

'Paul Croucher is the owner of Red Wheelbarrow Books in Melbourne’s Brunswick. The store’s name – recalling William Carlos Williams’ famous poem – suggests much about the provenance of his poetry. Croucher’s The Landing exhibits an imagist (and orientalist) aesthetic of uncluttered lines, a faith in observation and everyday language, and a commitment to the local, whether the poet is roaming around the world or at home.' (Introduction)

'The beginning of Michael Sala’s The Restorer is somewhat of a slow burn. It’s 1989 and a family – father Roy, mother Maryanne, teenage daughter Freya, and eight-year-old Daniel – move in to a rundown house in Newcastle, New South Wales, to renovate and start afresh. It’s clear, though, that something’s not quite right. The next-door neighbour’s offer of help is rudely rebuffed by Roy, the kids are guarded and Maryanne is strangely distant. We know already that things will go badly wrong.' (Introduction)

'Karl Stead is in his 80s now and for as long as anyone can remember he has been New Zealand’s leading literary critic. It was in the 1960s that he wrote The New Poetic, a book that shed light on T. S. Eliot by suggesting that The Waste Land was a poetry of breakdown and Four Quartets was a very uneven work not simply amenable to recuperation by the suggestion that it was deliberately so. ' (Introduction)