Cirrus@Austlit

'In Petra White’s latest collection, shortlisted in August this year for the Judith Wright Calanthe Award for a Poetry Collection in the Queensland Literary Awards, the poet contemplates the complexities of midlife —marriage, motherhood and encroaching mortality —in 39 thought-provoking new poems.'  (Introduction)

'Western Australian poet Lisa Collyer’s debut collection is challenging, confronting and exquisitely crafted. She addresses feminist concerns in poems about ageing, beauty and desire as well as speaking the unspeakable in autobiographical poems about living with the limitations of the female body. Infertility, childlessness, termination, domestic violence and sexual assault are front of mind in Collyer’s work but she also tackles environmental concerns — female bodies and the plight of the planet are linked by themes of grief and a race against time.'  (Introduction)

'Australian poet, dancer, actor and filmmaker, Richard James Allen’s most recent work transports the reader through a disorienting and disturbing but also fascinating afterlife encounter.'  (Introduction)

'Tasmanian poet Esther Ottaway’s latest collection is brave, experimental and brimming with power and artistry. Her poems reveal the truth of her own autistic experience but also the embodied experiences of a multitude of undiagnosed women and girls who are neurodivergent.'  (Introduction)

'Beth Spencer’s most recent publication, The Age of Fibs, is a montage of stories, memoir and microlit that, if you’re a reader like me, will surprise, amuse and hold you until the last page is turned. Spencer, a seasoned writer of poetry, short stories, novels and academic works (most recently Vagabondage in 2015 which was poetry, microlit and travelogue) readily admits that this blend of pieces—many published previously in other contexts— derives its power and connection through ‘the energy of crossover’.' (Publication summary)

'Our Ways on Earth is Peter Bakowski’s eighth full collection of poems—wise, wistful and idiosynchratic in equal parts. Bakowski has been writing poetry for forty years and is delightfully described in the author biography at the back of the book as ‘a bounding deer in the long grass of poetry’ [73]. With disarming simplicity, these poems carry us in an uninterrupted stream through a gallery of human and non-human portraits, occasionally breaking for playfulness with quirkier poems about what poetry is, or that rely on strings of brightly imaged metaphors, or haiku and one- or two-line dryly humorous poems.' (Publication summary)