Cirrus@Austlit

'If being powerless makes you jumpy, then being poor makes you envious. You notice when other people are happy and you become keenly aware of those things that they have, that make them happy, that you do not have. Sometimes, you know better than they do about what brings them joy.

'At the age of eleven, Andrew Sneddon finds himself living in the criminal underbelly of Queensland’s Gold Coast. His conman stepfather has moved the family from suburban Canberra to chase his next scam. But in the 1980s, there is scant help for a woman and her three children who are ricocheting between domestic violence and homelessness.

'As Sneddon charts the sometimes farcical, often frightening, journey of his teenage years, he also reflects on them through his adult archaeologist eyes to ancient civilisations. We are reminded of how impressive the human race has been, but also how utterly predictable and incapable it is of learning from its own past.

'Told with unflinching candour and refreshing humour, Prehistoric Joy explores the timeless importance of family and the many meanings of 'home' to better understand what brings us all joy' (Publication summary)

'Fukuoka relates the experiences of two Australian brothers, Alf and Wally, in a prisoner-of-war camp in Japan during the Second World War, expressed in poetry in the voice of the surviving brother Alf.

'Based on the lives of his own great-uncles, Andrew Sneddon’s poetry captures the intimacy that exists between brothers, while reflecting on the psychology of the human condition in ways that transcend the particular. Sneddon’s verse contemplates life and death, brutality and kindness, beauty and horror, courage and cowardice. It reflects on suffering and the consequences of suffering.

'Each poem — some bleak, some uplifting, some confronting and others soothing — will move readers in different ways. Fukuoka is poetry for those who question what it is to be human.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'The Wait-a-While Vine is a poetic imagining of the doomed Cape York expedition of Edmund Kennedy and Jacky Jacky in 1848. The verses merge landscape and dreamscape, history and legend. Beginning with the young Kennedy’s life in England and ending with Jacky Jacky’s death, the poems traverse topics as diverse as the terrain covered by the explorers.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Ghost Armies presents Andrew Sneddon’s poetic works Fukuoka and The Wait-a-While Vine in one volume. Sneddon’s connected verses explore two defining episodes in Australia’s history and provide emotional and cultural insights of both personal and universal import.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.