Publications
New Poets Series
On July 1st, 2010, Poetry advocate, humanitarian and the Premier’s wife, Rosemary McKenzie, launched our New Poets Series at the Wheeler Centre. It was a sold out event and an exhilarating experience for these ‘new poets’. Check out a short video of the event here.
The APC is proud to publish the work of these four poets, who undertook the residency at Varuna in 2009: Michelle Leber, Chloe Wilson, Ann de Hugard and Rachael Petridis.
The Australian Poetry Centre works hard to support and promote new poets and sees this as part of its core purpose and a vital component of its New Poets Program. The first New Poets Series was launched in 2009. The print run was 500 copies each and the poet’s books were launched at the Sydney Writers Festival, The Dreaming Festival, and Wordstorm (NT) and launched in Melbourne at the Overload Festival. Two of these poets were sold out within 6 months.
Click here for more information about the residency.
The 2010 New Poets Series is:
A Question of Translation by Ann de Hugard
The Weeping Grass by Michelle Leber
Sundecked by Rachael Petridis
The Mermaid Problem by Chloe Wilson
For orders of the books please contact admin@australianpoetrycentre.org.au
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2010
A Question of Translation
Ann de Hugard
RRP: $10.00
“Is that how you felt?” – that’s the question Ann de Hugard’s poems ask, with the close attention of a translator. Translation as the daily lot. Translation, moving from one day to another, from youth to age, from your own life towards an understanding and expression of other lives, other cultures – that is her business. She pursues it with light touch and a beautiful depth of caring.
- Judith Rodriguez
Ann de Hugard’s working life included manning the Black Cat chute at a chocolate factory, secondary teaching, teaching in a women’s prison and running a café. After leaving regular work she concentrated on writing and completed a Diploma of Professional Writing and Editing. During that period, as a member of Western Women Writers, she was on the committee of editors of Poetrix.
Nine years ago she moved to Castlemaine, Central Victoria. There she has run writing workshops and taught Creative Writing. More recently she worked in the Kimberley, teaching adults in a remote community. In 2005 she was a winner of the ABC regional short story competition. A regular reader at the Guildford Hotel, she is a six-time winner of the Castlemaine Cup for best poem.
Inspiration for her writing includes travel, her past, and multi-cultural Australia.
The Weeping Grass
Michelle Leber
RRP: $10.00
The Weeping Grass takes us into a realm of wildlife and seascapes; an underwater universe where the reader experiences the world in a grain of sand, an azure sky where swifts ‘wake-snatch and / sky-whip on a hungry wind’, and a river valley where we can see Blake’s heaven in a wild flower. Michelle Leber is a poet who allows the process of ‘seeing’ to shape her language into a music that celebrates life: like the calligrapher translating a moment of revelation into a universal line. She is a poet of great lucidity and lyricism, and this book of beautifully written poetry reads as if every line was lived and imagined. Many excellent books have been published in Australia over the last year, and I am pleased to say that The Weeping Grass is one of the best of them.
– Robert Adamson
…Australian poets lead the way when it comes to the poetry of flora and fauna. Take, for example Michelle Leber’s ‘Heat Wave, Melbourne’… these lines are a knockout.
– Sydney Morning Herald
Michelle Leber lives close to Port Philip Bay. She has been a guest at poetry readings, festivals and community engagements. Her work has appeared in newspapers, literary journals, anthologies, ecology bulletins, high school texts and on trains.
Sundecked
Rachael Petridis
A gentle, perceptive and intensely lyrical spirit infuses the poems of Rachael Petridis. There is astute judgement of language and tone, a seriousness and sensitivity that avoids solemnity. There are evocations of places and people, and a sense of celebration that nestles next to an awareness of loss and longing. There is passion, memory, joy, and much wisdom in the feelings she shares so generously with the reader.
– Shane McCauley
Rachael Petridis is a Western Australian poet. She is a founding member of the OOTA writing group, Fremantle, which in 2007 established indigo Journal of West Australian Writing. Her work has appeared in Australian literary journals, anthologies and periodicals, most recently Lines in the Sand (FAWWA), Weighing of the Heart and Famous Reporter. In 2004 she was selected for the New Poets Program at Wollongong NSW. In August 2009 she won a place at the Macquarie Group Varuna Longlines/Australian Poetry Centre Workshop in Katoomba NSW.
The Mermaid Problem
Chloe Wilson
From Hypatia’s execution to a tiger’s postprandial grooming The Mermaid Problem exhibits a wicked, free-range imagination, formal panache and scintillating wit – a stunning debut collection.
– Marion May Campbell
Chloe Wilson is currently undertaking a PhD in creative writing. Her poems have appeared in several literary journals and magazines, and she is a former poetry editor for Voiceworks. She lives in Melbourne.
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2009
Congratulations to Ali Cobby Eckermann and Kimberley Mann who launched their books at the Eye of the Storm – Alice Springs Writers’ Festival on 4 May 2009. Click here for photos from the launch.
little bit long time
Ali Cobby Eckermann
SOLD OUT
In Ali Cobby Eckermann’s first volume, little bit long time, we experience a true poet’s strong and singing voice.
She is a lyric poet who can launch into forays of didactic protest or moving elegy, she is agile enough to write the spoken word and combine dialogue with metaphor and startling images. She has a tradition of innovators behind her, with poets Oodgeroo Noonuccall to Lionel Fogarty, who also experimented with writing the spoken word and creating new forms.
- Robert Adamson
After 25 years travelling around the NT, Ali Cobby Eckermann recently relocated to the ‘intervention free’ district of Koolunga SA. Renovations of the old General Store, writing poetry and rural relaxation compete for her attention. Ali shares the space with her dog Merlin, who also spent 10 years in the car.
‘Intervention Pay Back’ was the last poem she wrote in Central Australia, which won the NT Red Earth Poetry Award in 2008. little bit long time is her first published book of poetry.
Evangelyne & other poems
Helen Hagemann
RRP: $10.00
Helen Hagemann’s writing is a triumphant celebration of the power of poetry to recapture the past and still the present. Whether she is remembering growing up on the Central Coast of NSW, memorialising family and neighbours or observing cormorants, she makes each moment vividly real. These poems have all the dazzle and sting of a summer day at the beach, with the esky full of rolls and lettuce and the ‘cozzie’ a ‘rainbow’ to put on. Evangelyne & other poems is an exuberant, generous, thoroughly lived-in collection. Its relish for the everyday details of Australian life is a rare delight.
- Jean Kent
Helen Hagemann grew up on the Central Coast of NSW during the 50s & 60s, and lived in Sydney for a short time before settling in Perth.
Her poetry is widely published in literary magazines and anthologies. She has an MA in Writing, and teaches prose at the Fremantle Arts Centre.
Evangelyne & other poems is her first literary publication.
Awake During Anaesthetic
Kimberley Mann
SOLD OUT
The poems tingle with life and a wonderfully sensuous delight in word and image. I was ready to follow Kimberley in whatever journey she undertook in this haunting collection, whether to a childhood in Java on her father’s back or into the haunted wasteland of the dispossessed and alienated.
- Thomas Shapcott
Kimberley Mann grew up in Alice Springs. She has published 60 poems, one libretto, two plays and a short story. She works as a therapeutic counsellor, and lives by the sea with a beautiful green eyed pussycat. Please see here for recent reviews on Kimberley Mann’s publication.
Canyon
Andrew Slattery
RRP: $10.00
I love this book for leaving me with that thrilling sense of poetry’s eloquence and fire. Each poem is involved with what is mysterious about the world, yet also stingingly and movingly real. Wonderfully mulled syntax and diction, with his primed, intelligent and riveting imagination.
- Judith Beveridge
Andrew Slattery’s poetry has been published throughout Europe, North America, New Zealand and Australia. His prizes include the Roland Robinson, Henry Kendall and Val Vallis Literary Awards. Canyon is his first collection of poetry.