Cirrus@Austlit

'Every now and then I find myself in a reading funk—a period where neither novels nor short story collections, nor the kinds of long-form journalism and narrative non-fiction that I usually enjoy, can really draw me in. At these times, reading poetry can help; it aids a kind of slowing down that can be exactly what I need. Doing something else for a while can help too, but that normally involves the kinds of distractions—social media, television—that make it more difficult to engage with a book. Usually it’s just a matter of allowing time to pass, then finding the perfect book or story to get me all excited again. Often, literary journals provide the spark.' (Editorial introduction)

'What could Australian poetry look like at the moment? It could look like any kind of poetry, like any language formed in (mostly) turning lines. It could look like a thousand things. Here, it looks like this: one big picture with countless moving parts. We think it's a good picture. We know it's not the only one, but it's a contribution to a conversation that's always carrying on beyond the moment.' (Bella Li and Jill Jones Foreword introduction)