Cirrus@Austlit

'Best of Australian Poems is an annual anthology collecting previously published and unpublished poems to create a poetic snapshot and barometer of the year that was. Capturing the richness and diversity of Australian poetry across a timeframe of 1 July 20231 August 2024, the series (now in its fourth year) explores how poetic responses to the contemporary moment develop with each passing year.

'The book opens with an introduction by its 2024 editors, multiple award-winning and highly respected poets and editors, Kate Lilley and Shastra Deo. Kate is one of the longest-standing poets of repute and respect in the country, with work considered ground-breaking and innovating over decades. Shastra's own major prizes include the prestigious, national Australian Literature Society Gold Medal and their poetry is also continually experimental and fearless.

'Previous editors of this prestigious series have been Ellen van Neerven and Toby Fitch (2021); Jeanine Leane and Judith Beveridge (2022); and Panda Wong and Gig Ryan (2023).'  (Publication summary)

'You don’t remember this place. This land could be
arid or hungry or wet or rot. That does not matter. Your memory
can’t tell you what no longer exists.

'Beginning in the nuclear waste deposits of our future, The Exclusion Zone bears witness in a language degrading faster than the radioactive byproducts of our history and our present. At once prophecy and annihilation, these poems speak with ghosts, questioning how our words – and what they seek to preserve – can contend with the inevitability of their own decay. Nuclear materials drift throughout this collection, metastasising and resisting their own disposal. The Exclusion Zone is a poetry of warning, of séance, of incantation – a poetry of what survives, where the apocalypse-to-be manifests in human tenderness and vulnerability.' (Publication summary)