Cirrus@Austlit

'A living songbook more than four years in the making, Andrew Ford’s hymnal brings together the words of sixteen contemporary Australian writers – poets, essayists and folksingers – in songs of praise, awe, grief, hope, joy, and natural splendour, dedicated not to a god, but to the land.

'The ever-daring voices of Luminescence Chamber Singers join forces with two rising stars: Hilary Geddes, 2021 Freedman Jazz Fellow and lead guitarist of Triple J favourites The Buoys, and category-defying cellist Freya Schack-Arnott. Red Dirt Hymns unfolds to the evocative imagery of Sammy Hawker, whose art is created within the fabric of country itself: saltwater, limestone and eucalypt.

'From Ellen van Neerven’s dark clouds to John Kinsella’s abundant gardens, Red Dirt Hymns does what a hymnal is meant to do: it draws us closer – to each other, and to the light and shade of our wide brown land.'

Source: Canberra International Music Festival.

'Lisa Brockwell’s debut poetry collection Earth Girls (PSP 2016) enjoyed general admiration and acclaim. ‘Celebrate the arrival of a vital Australian voice,’ wrote Dan Ryder in Plumwood Mountain.

'This second collection The Round Ring builds on the strong foundations of that initial foray, buttressed by growing recognition and respect for that ‘vital voice’ in national and international poetry spaces.

'Riffing on Emily Wilson’s recent translation of The Odyssey, Brockwell shares recently discovered postcards between a roving Penelope and a stay-at-home Odysseus. Her own restless travels take her to Doha, Houston, Bedford Square always with a wry, dry eye on the human and political dimensions of the landscape. Her gaze extends to family, to art, and as in the multilayered title poem, to our animal familiars and the perspectives they offer.'   (Publication summary)

'Earth Girls is the first collection from a poet well known to readers of small magazines and anthologies in the UK and Australia, and to aficionados of poetry prizes.' (Publication summary)