Cirrus@Austlit

'G-d, Sleep, and Chaos is a prayer of thanks for a broken world.

'Alan Fyfe’s debut collection employs a core of Jewish philosophy to explore themes of love, metaphysics, the self-destructive impulse, trauma, and the transcendent. With a boisterous affection for all things absurd and liminal and a bristling loyalty to working class aesthetics, G-d, Sleep, and Chaos includes poems that swing from visceral to hilarious across seven sections, and a range of forms, to ask how we might come by gratitude, and the peace of silence, in our bleakest moments. G-d, Sleep, and Chaos is a collection for the questing mind and the wanting spirit.' (Publication summary)

'Scott-Patrick Mitchell’s Clean (Upswell 2022) and Alan Fyfe’s T (Transit Lounge 2022) are books with a deep relation. A poetry collection and a novel respectively, Clean and T were released within less than a year of each other and attracted multiple award listings; and both deal with methamphetamine use in Western Australia, a state which consumes the drug at almost twice the national average. The authors share a longstanding friendship. Here, they discuss the highs and lows of writing about meth use from a basis of lived experience. This conversation was conducted over email in January.'  (Introduction)

'T or Timothy lives on the economic margins, both using and selling methamphetamine in Mandurah. When a friend, Gulp, tragically dies and T grows close to Lori-Bird his life promises to become more centred. But he moves between loving and leaving her.

'This is a lyrical and arresting portrait of characters who crave love but struggle with addiction and the tenuous yet intimate community connections it gives them. The spirit of the Peel landscape informs both T’s identity and the lives of the people he encounters and offers a way out.

'Intimate with suffering and beauty, T is also at times transcendent. A contemporary novel with the urgency of what Davies’ Candy, Kerouac’s On the Road, and Garner’s Monkey Grip were to their own times.'  (Publication summary)