Cirrus@Austlit

'All poetry, not just Australian poetry, is always in need of products that supply art, intellect and satiric bite. This is why Grand Parade Poets is very pleased to announce the publication of Whirlwind Duststorm, a new volume of poetry by John Hawke, which certainly possesses all three.

'Consciousness is like the experience of the poem – of being in perpetual motion, constantly distracted by the images before us. Embroiled in this storm, we are travelling, pummelled, unable to find firm footing, and yet shaped and honed by different influences, some of which are merely peripheral, and many of which emerge from class. Identity, personal history and narrative are called into question, leaving us with the poem as the only permanence.

'“Whirlwind Duststorm points at an answer to Hölderlin’s question about the purpose of poets in destitute times.” – Liam Ferney' (Publication summary)

'Grand Parade Poets are pleased to be publishing The Gang of One, the Selected Poems of Robert Harris, edited by Judith Beveridge with an introduction by Philip Mead. Though well represented in anthologies, Harris (1951-1993) is a major writer who has until now missed out on the Selected Poems milestone. Unaligned with any ‘faction’, though a close friend to many in the poetry/literary community, Harris is a very fine poet with this for an important hallmark: the variety of his subject matter and inspiration. Consider this for starters: you turn the page from a suite of poems fired by the World War 2 sinking of HMAS Sydney and then you are in Tudor England, with all the plots and counter-plots surrounding Lady Jane Grey, the ‘nine day queen’ and martyr. And beyond even the variety there are two things which truly anchor the Harris opus: his commitment to writing of and about Australia (though never to the exclusion of others, nor in any phoney nationalist manner) and his Christian faith, which probably was his poetry’s bedrock. Here is a volume of verse both gritty and humane, by a decided ‘one off’. Both his memory and Australian literature deserve it.' (Publication summary)

'From near two decades, with well over 450 personnel employed in their making these group efforts are maddeningly memorable examples of what collective brain power can do when it bends the rules, and let's face it plenty of today's poetry could do with a solid amount of rule-bending. Name the muse and she was doubtless invoked.' (Publication Summary)

'After two decades-plus of quiet yet pointed observations in both Australia and the United States, The Blue Decodes is poetry by a woman speaking for herself and just as importantly about her generation, a generation whose ambitions and emotions have become very fractured and fragmented. Yet, as Cassie Lewis advises throughout her work, all that optimistic blue we once saw beckoning can be regained, decoded if you will, that we may become our original, authentic selves.' (Publication summary)

'Unpredictable and boisterously entertaining, Cassandra Atherton’s Exhumed is a collection of interconnected prose poems exploring the reanimation of canonical texts against a backdrop of popular culture references: William Carlos Williams, Nabokov, Stevie Smith and Emily Dickinson are paired with ‘Happy Meals’, Hill’s Hoists, Bonds t-shirts and the Moonee Valley Bistro. Divided into two parts – ‘Inter’ with its play on intertexts and ‘Disinter’ where the references are unearthed, these prose poems are fractured moments centred on love, betrayal, abandonment and death. Atherton’s appeals to l’humour noir and the politicisation of the poet’s private spaces make for an exhilarating and intoxicating read.' (Publication summary)

'The nature of Sydney and the nature in Sydney, these are the foundations for much of Michael Aiken’s plain-speaking poetry, a verse that can be spare or lush as the city itself or as the city requires.

'Michael Aiken’s poems are minimalist in style and expansive in scope. He has the ability to infuse a poem with menace and tenderness, often within the same line, and he does so with a quiet yet potent confidence.' (Publication summary)