Cirrus@Austlit

'Some of the best, most significant writing produced in Australia over more than two centuries is gathered in this landmark anthology. Covering all genres - from fiction, poetry and drama to diaries, letters, essays and speeches - the anthology maps the development of one of the great literatures in English in all its energy and variety.

'The writing reflects the diverse experiences of Australians in their encounter with their extraordinary environment and with themselves. This is literature of struggle, conflict and creative survival. It is literature of lives lived at the extremes, of frontiers between cultures, of new dimensions of experience, where imagination expands.

'This rich, informative and entertaining collection charts the formation of an Australian voice that draws inventively on Indigenous words, migrant speech and slang, with a cheeky, subversive humour always to the fore. For the first time, Aboriginal writings are interleaved with other English-language writings throughout - from Bennelong's 1796 letter to the contemporary flowering of Indigenous fiction and poetry - setting up an exchange that reveals Australian history in stark new ways.

'From vivid settler accounts to haunting gothic tales, from raw protest to feisty urban satire and playful literary experiment, from passionate love poetry to moving memoir, the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature reflects the creative eloquence of a society.

'Chosen by a team of expert editors, who have provided illuminating essays about their selections, and with more than 500 works from over 300 authors, it is an authoritative survey and a rich world of reading to be enjoyed.' (Publisher's blurb)

Allen and Unwin have a YouTube channel with a number of useful videos on the Anthology.

'Living Systems celebrates poetry’s unique capacity to challenge and make new our experience of the world. At the heart of this collection is a reaffirmation of poetry as essential kit, as an art form that deepens and expands how we might perceive the world and know each other. The poems gathered here offer an alternative to the streams, echo chambers and silos of contemporary media and return the reader to the deep flow and entanglement of human consciousness and language unique to poetry. 

'Since 1999, Vagabond Press has quietly grown to become one of the leading publishers of poetry and poetry in translation in Australia, creating a transnational list that includes some of the key poets and poetry translators of the Asia Pacific region. Marking twenty-five years of hardscrabble independent small press publishing, Living Systems showcases poets from Australia and across Asia Pacific, and offers a snapshot of poetry, poetics and life in all its complexity, nuance and possibility at the start of the twenty-first century. 

'With over 400 pages of poetry from around 170 poets and translators from Australia, Japan, Korea, China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Myanmar, Singapore, America, New Zealand, Mexico and elsewhere, Living Systems marks twenty-five years of small press publishing by Vagabond Press and celebrates poetry and individual human creativity.' (Publication summary)