Cirrus@Austlit

'She Goes to Town explores the tensions between leaving and staying, crossing lines, endings and beginnings. In poetry, micro-lit, short prose there is a mapping of the path to destruction and the saving graces of hope and trying again

‘She separates herself. There are different voices

here, and

separations. Cutting away

from her past, from varied, acceptable and

permissible futures

dreamed into expectations by others on her

behalf. From 

always being a dangerous difference in a

country town,

and rural school. Segue to wide-eyed in the city, to

wild eyed, in a

city never imagined.’

'In She Goes to Town Sandra Renew writes as a lesbian poet. She shows a gendered world from the point of view of an outsider and one who lives on the fringes of heterosexuality, and who fully inhabits a voice of dissent and protest. She deep-dives into gender and comments on living in both urban and rural communities.'

'It's the 1970s and 1980s, and Sandra Renew, a young lesbian activist in Far North Queensland, is involved in some of the most politically charged moments in Australian history. From Pine Gap to civil rights marches in Queensland to the first Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras and beyond, Apostles of Anarchy juxtaposes newspaper headlines and archival material with the personal experience of these struggles. It asks what it is to fight for the acceptance of difference in a discourse of prejudice and hostility.' (Publication summary)

'V8 takes you on a journey in every form of vehicle, from the car to the bicycle, the ute to the train. Two poets reflect on their love of cars, the issues that arise from transport, and the many roads they have travelled.'  (Publication summary)

'In The Ruby Red's Affair, Scoot Valuti undertakes a visit to a local lesbian bar/night club, meets up with her friends, and, in search of a lifelong loving relationship based on mutual respect and appreciation, has a brief flirtation which results, sadly, in a serious affair which lasts a nanosecond and ends badly. Just as the characters are ambiguous and androgynous, so is the book difficult to define: a short novel or a verse narrative, or a poetry novella, or... It chronicles both a moment and a lifetime, a transformative mind-blowing encounter and another despondent disappointment.'  (Publication summary)

'Over the last five years, from the #Me Too Movement to same-sex marriage, from devastating bush fires to the global pandemic, the online poetry journal Not Very Quiet has dedicated itself to publishing women’s voices from across the globe. Not Very Quiet: The anthology selects poetry that has given voice to the social conscience of the community, constructions of lesbian and queer, the challenges posed to the social construction of gender, as well as the complexities and possibilities of the human condition.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'These poems move freely in time from the 1950s to the present day, from the contemporary to memoir, from gender politics to bushfires and floods. They show you jeeps, trucks, girlfriends and cane-cutters, widgies, Singer sewing machines, tattoos and rats and class grudges.

'Sandra Renew uses a range of traditional poetry forms to lay bare some of the gaping fault-lines of gender relations especially as they are experienced by LGBTIQ communities.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.