Cirrus@Austlit

'The follow-up to the international bestselling The Monkey’s Mask, Dorothy Porter’s Crete is an astonishing collection that traverses Greek myth and Russian poets, the memory of cigarettes and the wild abandon of love.

'Crete is a heady mix of dark humour, archaeology, breathtaking eroticism, risk-taking and effortless economy. It is a book by a writer at the peak of her highly original powers.

'This collection includes 81 poems in six cycles'.

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Dorothy Porter was one of Australia’s truly original writers, renowned for her passionate, offbeat poetry and verse novels. The Best 100 Poems of Dorothy Porter draws from her life’s work to present the many facets of Porter the poet, from stretching the fabric of ancient mythology to delving into the beauty of the natural world, or inking an intimate message on your heart. This elegant hardback, a companion volume to The Best 100 Poems of Les Murray, is the perfect gift for Porter fans and newcomers alike. (Publisher's blurb)

'Paul Kelly’s songs are steeped in poetry. And now he has gathered from around the world the poems he loves – poems that have inspired and challenged him over the years, a number of which he has set to music. This wide-ranging and deeply moving anthology combines the ancient and the modern, the hallowed and the profane, the famous and the little known, to speak to two of literature’s great themes that have proven so powerful in his music: love and death – plus everything in between.

'Here are poems by Yehuda Amichai, W.H. Auden, Tusiata Avia, Hera Lindsay Bird, William Blake, Bertolt Brecht, Constantine Cavafy, Alison Croggon, Mahmoud Darwish, Emily Dickinson, John Donne, Ali Cobby Eckermann, James Fenton, Thomas Hardy, Kevin Hart, Gwen Harwood, Seamus Heaney, Philip Hodgins, Homer, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Langston Hughes, John Keats, Ono No Komachi, Maxine Kumin, Philip Larkin, Li-Young Lee, Norman MacCaig, Paula Meehan, Czeslaw Milosz, Les Murray, Pablo Neruda, Sharon Olds, Ovid, Sylvia Plath, Dorothy Porter, Rumi, Anne Sexton, William Shakespeare, Izumi Shikibu, Warsan Shire, Kenneth Slessor, Wislawa Szymborska, Máire Mhac an tSaoi, Ko Un, Walt Whitman, Judith Wright, W.B. Yeats and many more.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.