Cirrus@Austlit

'An Open Book celebrates the power of poetry and reaffirms David Malouf as one of Australia's most celebrated and beloved writers.

'This is only David Malouf's third new poetry volume in nearly 40 years, so it is a significant publishing event. As one of Australia's greatest living poets, Malouf continues to meditate and reflect on themes of mortality and memory.

'The poems in An Open Book are attentive and evocative, vital and beautiful, revisiting and reimagining some of the key themes that have resonated with readers over his impressive career. Like the 'small comfort of light . . . as night comes on', Malouf's new poems hold close the precious and tender.

'Only a few of these poems have ever been published, so most of the collection will be completely new to readers everywhere. An Open Book will be the literary gift of the Christmas and summer of 2018. ' (Publication summary)

'By the time you hold this issue of Island, we'll be collating and considering the responses to our first major survey of readers in a number of years. The online survey closes on 1 September 2018 but if you miss this chance to share your views, you're welcome to contact us by email because we value the feedback of our readers and we want to create the magazine you want to read. As former editor Matthew Lamb wrote in Island 142, 'it is readers who close the circuit created by writers and their works, thereby sparking the light of literature. It is readers who turn writers into authors, and their words into essays. into fiction, into poetry'  (Vern Field : Introduction)