Cirrus@Austlit

'Tide by Ivy Ireland, Flying Island Books 2024, was launched by Brook Emery at the Watt Gallery Space on 6 April 2024 as part of the 2024 Newcastle Writers Festival.

'I’ve read and admired Ivy Ireland’s three previous books of poetry. This afternoon, simply, subjectively, in five minutes, I’d like to share with you five reasons why I keep reading Ivy’s poetry and why you, too, might enjoy the poems in Tide.' (Introduction) 

'It’s such my great privilege to be with you here to launch two such accomplished and substantial poetry collections by two such distinguished WA poets, Marcella Polain and Morgan Yasbincek, in Fremantle/ Walyalup. As I begin, I want to echo our wonderful MC Jan Teagle Kapetas. The culture, history, and connections to the land on which we’re standing go back tens of thousands of years. I’d like to acknowledge that it’s the land of the Whadjuk people of the Noongar nation we’re gathered on, and to pay my respects tonight to elders past, present, and emerging.'  (Introduction)

'If I had to sum up Carl Walsh’s Tarp Green Light in one word it would be mindful. The work focuses inward, quietly observant, converting memory into the present moment through deep and sustained observation. In many ways the book takes the form of a journey, moving through places and spaces but also time, moving back towards childhood, the discovery of a personal ancestry, and even beyond that into the human relationship and shared DNA with animal life and the natural world: creature, rock and lichen. This is an exploration of deep connections and deep time, the way spaces connect, and the way in which humans inhabit and change those spaces. The book is structured into four sections, each similar in the ways they utilise language, simultaneously condensed and expansive, beginning with the self as innocent youth, rooted in sensuality, and moving through language towards a non-linguistic awareness that is both knowing and yet still rooted in the innocent self.' (Introduction)

'Yasmine Gooneratne was a poet, a writer of short stories and novels, and a literary critic, editor and reviewer. Born in Sri Lanka in 1935, while the country was still known as ‘Ceylon’, she was educated at Bishops College School for Girls and the University of Peradeniya, where she was a dedicated student of English literature. Yasmine was awarded a scholarship to the University of Cambridge in the 1950s, and she completed her doctorate there, as a Postgraduate student at Girton College. Her thesis was a groundbreaking one, and was one of the first published works of scholarship in the field of Commonwealth Literature. She is renowned as an Eighteenth Century scholar, and her books on the work of Jane Austen and Alexander Pope, published by Cambridge University Press, have been studied by university students all over the world.' (Introduction)