‘Though its title suggests a dark netherworld the poems in swimming underground offer striking glimpses into the past present and possible future. Some movingly recall childhood trauma others celebrate iconic Sydney places and people such as Cockatoo Island and Mr Eternity. There are pointed satires of Centrelink ......
An engrossing detailed moving account of a community dealing with crisis. The Australian landscape the 1970s and the sense of Australian character and culture are evocatively portrayed.’ – Nigel Krauth
‘I’m impressed with the wealth of experience and information re-created. Congratulations on such a diverse ......
Surprising personal glimpses of the eminent and enigmatic Australian poet
‘I wonder sometimes if the literary pests are writing memoirs: “The last time I saw her she was pale and sick but smiling bravely.”’ So mused the dying Gwen Harwood in a letter written a few months before she succumbed to cancer. Nearly two ......
In his poem ‘The Road Not Taken’ Robert Frost writes of taking the road less travelled and this making all the difference. In ‘Leisure’ W.H. Davies writes ‘What is this life if full of care we have no time to stand and stare’. Both poems have strongly influenced how I have lived my life. In the past I ......
The Tiger in the Vineyard is a collection shaped by wide personal experience of pressing social issues. The poems reflect a commitment to verse that is lucid structured accessible and vivid and draws on its tradition and a deeply felt concern for the disadvantaged and traumatised. Written in a range of variations on traditional forms and free ......
I acknowledge with deep respect the Wiradjuri Elders past and present traditional custodians of the land that bore me and where the words I write were formed. The stories in these poems are all true and all come from that land between the three rivers - far western New South Wales - where my ancestors too lie buried.
In 2013 I started a BA in English and Creative Writing as a mature-age student. After a lecture on poetry I found myself much to my surprise inspired to write poems of my own. Suddenly out of the recesses of my mind surfaced memories of myself as a teenager filling notebook after notebook with experiences of thoughts and emotions put into ......
Born in Germany Margitta Acker came to Australia in June 1962. Five weeks later she was married at St Peter's Lutheran Church in Reid. For her it was a wedding among strangers. Her memories of settling in Canberra exploring her new surroundings finding work making friends and raising a family give a fascinating insight into everyday life in ......
We disappear into the poinciana shadows into the dream that alcohol and music and love create. I go in a dream in a myth. This is how it should be I think. This is the pagan story the truth the fairytales promised us the ending imagined from the earliest of murmured memories...But myths are not founded on reality and fairytales do not ......
