Cirrus@Austlit

'Judith Beveridge’s much-anticipated new collection of poems, the first since her prize-winning new and selected, Sun Music, in 2018.

'The poems in Tintinnabulum focus on animals, people, and places, though you could say that the real subject matter is the power of poetry, since the book explores how metaphor, simile, imagery and sound can reveal connections that are imaginative, revelatory and sometimes threatening. Beveridge’s creative use of language is most evident in the section of the book titled ‘Bizarre Bazaar’ ― where she plays on lines and titles by Wallace Stevens (a fitting companion), and offers linguistic elaborations on familiar objects, and strange beliefs and customs. Each detail leads to others through association, there is multiplicity everywhere, and movement and energy, and this is as true of the poems which capture the particular features of animals, the transient effects of landscape, or the memories of people and places, as it is of the language-oriented poems.

'There is a range of styles, lyrical, dramatic and narrative, which build on the achievements of poems in Beveridge’s previous collections. There is also an emotional range to the poems: some poems are joyous, celebratory, ecstatic ― others humorous, elegiac, nostalgic ― but the overall feeling is of the joy and richness of language.' (Publication summary)

'This week on the ABR Podcast we celebrate twenty years of the Peter Porter Poetry Prize with readings from six winners. We invited these poets to reflect on the prize and their winning poems. Hear fresh readings from Judith Beveridge, A. Frances Johnson, Damen O’Brien, Sara M. Saleh, Alex Skovron and Judith Bishop. The 2024 Porter Prize, worth a total of $10,000, closes on October 9.' (Introduction)

'Best of Australian Poetry is an annual anthology collecting previously published and unpublished poems to create a poetic snapshot of the year that was. Capturing the richness and diversity of Australian poetry, across a timeframe of 1 July 2021 - 7 August 2022, the series, now in its second year, will explore how poetic responses to the contemporary moment develop with each passing year.

'The book opens with an introduction by its 2022 editors, award-winning and highly respected poets and editors, Jeanine Leanne and Judith Beveridge. Both Jeanine, a Wiradjuri poet, and Judith have extensive experience as poetry teachers, academics and poetry anthologists previously.

'The Best of Australian Poetry (BoAP) series is published by Australia's national poetry organisation, Australian Poetry, and will feature two different guest editors each year, to amplify the range of voices selected. It is funded by the Australia Council for the Arts and individual patrons.' (Publication summary)

'According to his author’s note, Rain Towards Morning is ‘a definitive book’ of the poems Robert Gray wishes to preserve. Nameless Earth (Carcanet, 2006) is the most generously represented of Gray’s previous eight books. This is followed by his mid-career volume Piano (1988) in which he first began to publish a range of poetry with tight rhyme schemes and controlled rhythms. More than a third of the poems Gray has chosen for Rain Towards Morning are these formal or semi-formal compositions, indicating that he wishes to showcase this aspect of his work. Fewer poems have been chosen from his free verse books Grass Script (1978), The Skylight (1983) and Afterimages (2002), arguably his best books.'(Introduction)

'The poems in Sarah Holland-Batt’s new collection are tributes to the transfiguring power of the imagination, writes Judith Beveridge'