Cirrus@Austlit

'This new anthology of Australian and New Zealand poetry is remarkable for its exuberance, its vitality, and the notably youthful vibrancy of its free verse as well as its innovative prose poetry.  Including a wide range of voices from such well-known poets as John Kinsella, Pam Brown, and John Tranter to relative new-comers like Chris Tse and essa may ranapiri, The Language in my Tongue is full of surprises and special pleasures.

—Marjorie Perloff, Professor Emerita of English
 at Stanford University and Florence R. Scott Professor
 of English Emerita at the University of Southern California

'Here are vernaculars. Here are modern-day classics. Here is a “mind in an unclear world,” “a space perfection will never survive.”  Here is invention permitted to travel the world, in dense prose poems and in chatty ones, in capable free verse and ghazals, “emissaries” and “a russet lock in an envelope.” Here Echnida meets the Spider, “making things transparent,” and here [is] bodily frailty and erotic love. Here, readers, are some highlights of the Antipodes, two—no, far more than two—poetic traditions, made available for you. Investigate. Drink deep.

—Stephanie Burt, Professor of English at Harvard University'  (Publication summary)

'Living Systems celebrates poetry’s unique capacity to challenge and make new our experience of the world. At the heart of this collection is a reaffirmation of poetry as essential kit, as an art form that deepens and expands how we might perceive the world and know each other. The poems gathered here offer an alternative to the streams, echo chambers and silos of contemporary media and return the reader to the deep flow and entanglement of human consciousness and language unique to poetry. 

'Since 1999, Vagabond Press has quietly grown to become one of the leading publishers of poetry and poetry in translation in Australia, creating a transnational list that includes some of the key poets and poetry translators of the Asia Pacific region. Marking twenty-five years of hardscrabble independent small press publishing, Living Systems showcases poets from Australia and across Asia Pacific, and offers a snapshot of poetry, poetics and life in all its complexity, nuance and possibility at the start of the twenty-first century. 

'With over 400 pages of poetry from around 170 poets and translators from Australia, Japan, Korea, China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Myanmar, Singapore, America, New Zealand, Mexico and elsewhere, Living Systems marks twenty-five years of small press publishing by Vagabond Press and celebrates poetry and individual human creativity.' (Publication summary)