'Time Machines is the debut collection of poetry from Australian poet Caroline Williamson. At once acerbic and generously hearted, Williamson's poems carefully shape and form the everyday and personal into a meditation on the economic and political systems and the personalities that govern us. Through finely wrought narrative poems, Williamson vividly renders contemporary Melbourne in all its life as these same systems buckle and strain under the pandemic, the evolving climate catastrophe, and the hubris and incompetence of our political leaders. Williamson's poetry deftly and unapologetically, with insight and heart, explores while the personal is political, the political is also personal, holding the forces and individuals that govern us to account. This long-awaited debut collection brings a vital new voice to contemporary Australian poetry.' (Publication summary)