Cirrus@Austlit

'Prose poetry is a resurgent literary form in the English-speaking world and has been rapidly gaining popularity in Australia. Cassandra Atherton and Paul Hetherington have gathered a broad and representative selection of the best Australian prose poems written over the last fifty years.

'The Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry includes numerous distinguished prose poets-Jordie Albiston, joanne burns, Gary Catalano, Anna Couani, Alex Skovron, Samuel Wagan Watson, Ania Walwicz and many more and documents prose poetry's growing appeal over recent decades, from the poetic margins to the mainstream.

'This collection reframes our understanding not only of this dynamic poetic form, but of Australian poetry as a whole.' (Publication summary)

'Do not be afraid to think.

'Test form, renew form, or defy it.

'Know there is a new permission to speak, and for more voices.

'Not to censure, censor our inheritances—in which there is still the cherishable, the followable—but to question, yes, that. To make that effort, with caring, love, and as needed, fierceness.

'To write, read the self, which can also be multiple, as are our inheritances, and also within if wished for, community.

'When I first devised the idea of this New Series two years ago, it was intended to be celebratory, motivated by the current flourishing which is occurring in poetry and poetry publication in Australia. In it, another poet/critic or poetry community associate is ‘allied’ with a new or recent Australian poetry collection, be that an individual volume, or an anthology, or another platform. Some books go back a little (there is one from 2017), but most are of the past 12-24 months; the impetus was to make tribute to a splendid range of contemporary Australian poetry publishing.' (Jacinta Le Plastrier, Introduction)