Cirrus@Austlit

''Marking Seasons' is a recording of one woman’s life in verse. Poems that deal with love and loss, poems that tell stories of the past, poems in which characters reveal their own lives or the poet responds to the natural world – this is a remarkably diverse collection. From tender and elegiac love poems, to fondly nostalgic reminiscences of past days, to the misery of deeply-felt family tensions, to sharply pointed, witty and even scurrilous retelling of fairy tales – there is something in this collection for every reader.

'Drawing on six poetry collections and a vast range of individual poems, some previously published in journals and others appearing for the first time, this book offers poems from two decades of writing. With an observant and sympathetic eye, Valerie Volk brings to life scenes and characters from her world, real and imagined, sharing both the joy and the pain of contemporary life.'  (Publication summary)

'But there I stand, with one hand resting on his shoulder, and I wonder what I was feeling in that moment. Why did I place my hand there? Was it for comfort, for reassurance, or to show that he was mine?

'Emma Werner, now an old woman, is domineering, cold and difficult to love. But she has not always been so. What happened to Magdalena Johanna Emma Scholz, the bright young woman she once was? And why does she still take flowers to the grave of her first love?

'Emma turns to the journals she has kept for sixty years to rediscover her old self, and to reclaim her future. They reveal the story of a survivor: a woman who suffered but never wavered, whose strength of will and self-belief helped her endure and make a life for herself and her family in a small town in the Riverina.' (Publication summary)

'In Witnesses, Valerie Volk takes us behind the scenes for a fresh look at some of the great moments in biblical history. These sixteen compelling stories are told by those on the sidelines: Saul's armourbearer, Noah's daughter-in-law, frightened of water and about to board the Ark, a man who cut a hole in the roof of a house to lower his paralysed brother to Jesus, David's daughter Tamar, sexually assaulted by her brother ... witnesses at the edges of significant and familiar stories.

'The characters in Witnesses tell their own tales, but they are also observers of important events. Their stories will change the way you understand the Bible, and have implications for modern lives.' (Publication summary)