Cirrus@Austlit

'Technically expert and purposefully experimental, Three Books continues Holt's long interrogation of the lyric form, and of the language, the roles, and the conventions we find and lose ourselves in. This substantial and significant new collection is formed from three volumes of poetry that stand independent, yet also reverberate as one. The first volume, 'Merry War (of never meeting and never ending)' comprises Holt's loose versions of the love poems of Jahan Malek Khatun (a female contemporary of Hafez) and the Roman poet Catullus. Their poems alternate, in parallel, upon the same atemporal plane of expression and desire-they never meet, but beside each other they become the receiver for the other's invocations. The second volume, 'Nina in the Hag Mask', consists of poems and suites within a tonal loop-modern structures for housing the primitive Uncanny, the fears and anxieties that are our birthright. The final volume, 'April', is a long prose poem, sounding out the ways in which a self possesses time and language, and vice versa. Long-term readers of LK Holt will see in Three Books the further evolution of one of Australia's most formidable and ambitious poets.' (Publication summary)

'Harvest Lingo is the fourteenth collection of poems by Lionel Fogarty, a Murri man with traditional connections to the Yugambeh people from south of Brisbane and the Kudjela people of north Queensland. He is a leading Indigenous rights activist, and one of Australia’s foremost poets, and this collection displays all of the urgency, energy and linguistic audacity for which Fogarty is known.

'At the centre of the collection is a series of poems written in India. Deeply empathetic, these poems are remarkable for the connections they draw between the social problems the poet encounters in this country poverty, class division, corruption and those he sees in contemporary Australia, besetting his own people.

'Other poems tell of encounters between people and between cultures, address historical and cultural issues and political events, and pay tribute to important Indigenous figures. There are intensely felt lyrics of personal experience, and poems which contemplate Fogarty’s own position as a poet and an activist, speaking with and for his community.

'Fogarty’s poems are bold and fierce, at times challenging and confronting, moved by strong rhythms and a remarkable freedom with language. They are an expression of the ‘harvest lingo’ which gives the collection its title.' (Publication summary)

'Heide is an epic poem about history, painting, painters, patrons and the people who made art happen in Australia — from Louis Buvelot to Edith Rowan, Tom Roberts and Robert Streeton to Vassilief, Nolan, Tucker, Joy Hester, the Boyds, Mirka Mora, and Albert Namatjira, with a particular focus on the artists gathered around Sunday and John Reed at Heide in Melbourne.

'It is a poem that explores the influence of art and poetry on the psyche, and the influence of social class on both, from the upper echelons and industrialists of Melbourne, to the struggle of the working class through such artists as Alisa O’Connor, Noel Counihan and Yosl Bergner. It begins with the foundation of Melbourne, and in its epic scope traverses an encyclopaedic range of subjects, assembled from facts, quotations, proverbs, definitions, historical documents, newspaper accounts and the author’s own reminiscences. 

'Heide is about the poets and artists who put their lives on the line, the Australian preoccupation with landscape, the dominance of a masculinist aesthetic, the sidelining and denigration of Indigenous art, the struggle of women artists to assert their influence and presence, and the impact of migration on Australian culture. 

'It is a long poem made up of almost 300 poems, each bringing to life characters and incidents that are fleshed out in vivid detail and with a dramatic intensity unique in Australian poetry.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.