Cirrus@Austlit

'If one could learn to read the distinctive handwriting etched into each stone, and the sometimes-illegible messages scrawled into its very structure, one might start to understand the history of deep time.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'It was Elena who started the conversation. ‘I use зелений, червонийй and синій for my portraits.’ I wasn’t sure I had heard correctly but she repeated it. ‘Green, red and blue to make skin tones.’'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'But there was no implosion. The opposite happened; the hospital partially exploded and before we understood what was happening, great plumes of water rose up towards the sky as the shrapnel arched towards us. Great parts of the hospital flew at high speed towards the crowd in a silent theatre of gravity and mass and the unharnessed possibilities of matter.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'It's the hardness that holds no moisture. It's the completeness, the stillness that has no give — no reflection of the other ... In this case at least it's not even a coldness. That would imply disdain.

'No. These are the eyes of someone who does not love, nor even care. These are the eyes, as I remember them, as I looked up as a small child, into the face of my grandmother.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Millions of years of evolution buried deep within the double helix of my body's biologic fabric were on display during those few raucous hours. Rock enveloped in reptile embedded in mammal. Moan.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'These things leach through the unconscious one drip at a time.

'A tube of copper, a tin of coffee, a pair of broken wheels. Timber, always timber and string.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'It was an industry that spawned respectable businessmen in the Australian cities, whose names still designate streets and suburbs: men who made their start on the islands off Tasmania.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

' This is not a jellyfish.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'What comes
next: the long descent.
To let our tired bodies down,
over rock that has weathered
us, under the swift mallet
of light that grinds us
to the ground.
Beloved this world
isn’t even ours.
And it is also,
profoundly, ours.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Each day I sit on the slab of granite, estrange myself from the surrounding world, to find and spend time with you.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'There was a whiff of petroleum in the air. He turned and was faced with the towering sight of a cruise ship’s front hull. There was a dead body hanging by one leg from a rope that was attached to the anchor opening, and immediately to the right, in huge capital letters, was written THE WORLD.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'To go underground – Penetralia; the innermost secret parts and recesses; to go within, between rock and body, mysteries and doubt. A place of stillness – the black quiet world of fossil.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'As the route gains altitude, the integrity of the road’s surface diminishes; cracks reveal substrate, edges soften into the landscape and the village dissolves into a relaxed form of agriculture, then a feral fusion of native plants and weeds. The ascent becomes so acute that the Ape struggles to maintain its speed and, suddenly spent, spontaneously gives up, making a sound similar to a baby releasing a slow-motion raspberry from its wet lips.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'In 1994 when her last child left home, artist Gay Hawkes sold her house to finance a trip to Russia and Ireland. Since then she has ‘marched about the world’, as an Irish writer put it, to undertake artist residencies both in Australia and overseas. She works in situ, making sculpture and furniture, interpreting place and recording impressions. After losing everything to a bushfire in 2013, she took off for Armenia. Memoirs Of A Travelling Sheila tells the stories of an artist and her wanderings.'

Source: The People's Library.

'In Paintings in my Mind, Leo Deacon shares his eclectic collection of rhyming verse. Leo began writing poetry in the 1970’s. His poems reveal a rich history of lived experiences from Queenstown and the surrounding West Coast of Tasmania.'

Source: The People's Library.

'Using free verse and narrative, Repeat Pattern explores universal themes of love, loss, friendship and desire. Written over 20 years this collection of poems is on the one hand a very personal story with a unique set of circumstances. Just a dot and a dash in the history of time and human experience – one person’s pattern or mark amongst a world of seemingly infinite patterns. And yet could one person’s pattern be everyone’s pattern? And does that pattern repeat repeat repeat?'

Source: The People's Library.

'When 15 year old Jane Redwood first saw the Kraken, she assumed it was another of her Alice in Wonderland Syndrome hallucinations. Now she knows better. Trapped in another dimension, Jane has only seven days to find the Rabbit Hole and get back home. But with a murderous A.I. on her tail, the gigantic Mocker’s Tortoise now loose, and visions of a mad hatter plaguing her memory, will she make it to the W.H.I.T.E. R.A.B.B.I.T in time, or will she be trapped forever? Or, will the price of returning home be more than she’s willing to pay? This is the story of The Kraken And Me.'

Source: The People's Library.

'The Dangerous Pursuit Of Beauty is a collection of recent poems about encounters with the wild splendour of the mined and mountainous landscapes of western Tasmania. Speaking through the imagined voices of figures such as Frida Kahlo and Cassandra, it is also an exploration of what it means to live at the margins in troubled times. It is introduced with a meditation on the power of beauty to change us.'

Source: The People's Library.

'In My Beloved Murray, author Ollie Ralph shares her fond recollections of being a child, a daughter, a sister and a friend, all played out alongside the beautiful Murray River. The stories then extend to the joys and heartaches of Ollie’s life as a woman, a mother, a grandmother and a friend.'

Source: The People's Library.