Product Tag: new poetry

Unaligned with any of Australian poetry’s factions, yet well aware of his audience, Rob Wilson enjoys writing his risk-taking, for-the-hell-of-it poetry.

In an era of often overly-informative maximalism, Rob Wilson is succinct and measured − half-turned towards the world while auguring some newly burgeoning creation. Within the cathedral of Modernism, these poems are constructed like little chapels, cool and tenebrously illuminated. − John Hawke

Rob Wilson’s (great) titles, like little bold brains, direct poems of surprising image and syntactical direction, as if to say hey, think like this: it’s (tough) fun. A cloud in tight black jeans. − Michael Farrell

The nature of Sydney and the nature in Sydney, these are the foundations for much of Michael Aiken’s plain-speaking poetry, a verse that can be spare or lush as the city itself or as the city requires.

Michael Aiken’s poems are minimalist in style and expansive in scope. He has the ability to infuse a poem with menace and tenderness, often within the same line, and he does so with a quiet yet potent confidence.

Sacred kingfisher in a dead gum
beats a butterfly to pieces

These poems reveal a fierce ability to take risks with shape and form, image and breath. Here is a poet prepared to look under the skin of common ground and to offer us amazement. — Anthony Lawrence

Aiken has carved out his own patch of ground to observe and reflect upon … the work … gets increasingly stronger as the pages get turned. The ‘Sydney’ sequence … is a great achievement. This book is held together by the recurrent trope of ‘the security man’, constantly vigilant, alert to all that passes, finding potential threat in the fragments (detritus) of city existence, and yet open to glimpses of beauty and wonder which occur: so many unexpected epiphanies. The natural world and its law-of-the-jungle amorality is a constant point of reference; a reminder of how thin a veneer civilisation really is. — John A Scott

Unpredictable and boisterously entertaining, Cassandra Atherton’s EXHUMED is a collection of interconnected prose poems exploring the reanimation of canonical texts against a backdrop of popular culture references. Atherton’ s appeals to humour noir and the politicisation of the poet’s private spaces make for an exhilarating and intoxicating read.

Evan Jones is a notable senior Australian poet whose underrated status deserves to be rectified. This volume contains a generous selection of his published work, spanning more than half a century. Marked by clarity, formal versatility and technical command, Jones’ poetry celebrates family, love, friendship, the ordinary and extraordinary in daily living – and does so with honesty, wit and panache. An astute observer, he can also be a challenging political poet, as witnessed by his strange, visionary narrative ‘A Dream of Barricades’ published here in full.

All poetry, not just Australian poetry, is always in need of products that supply art, intellect and satiric bite. This is why Grand Parade Poets is very pleased to announce the publication of Whirlwind Duststorm, a new volume of poetry by John Hawke, which certainly possesses all three.

Consciousness is like the experience of the poem – of being in perpetual motion, constantly distracted by the images before us. Embroiled in this storm, we are travelling, pummelled, unable to find firm footing, and yet shaped and honed by different influences, some of which are merely peripheral, and many of which emerge from class. Identity, personal history and narrative are called into question, leaving us with the poem as the only permanence.

“Whirlwind Duststorm points at an answer to Hölderlin’s question about the purpose of poets in destitute times.” – Liam Ferney

“Wondrously evokes each precarious profit and loss that crams this multilayered world.” – Gig Ryan

John Hawke’s previous volume, Aurelia (Cordite 2015), received the Anne Elder award.