AustLit

'Gary Catalano was an important Australian poet. His talent was exquisitely refined, both in his subtle verse and in the prose poetry which he took to a higher pitch of excellence than any other Australian has attained.' — Les Murray

'The recent decade has witnessed a rapid rise in the number of Australian poets turning their hand to the prose poem. It is timely then to be reminded of the formidable oeuvre of our finest exponent of the form. The body of prose poetry Gary Catalano produced between 1980 and his death in 2002, now collected in a single volume for the first time, remains unsurpassed in our literature.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'Purgatorio Re-placed is a re-write of Dante’s Purgatorio, the second book of his Divine Comedy. Using Dorothy Sayers’ translation as a guide, Alex Selenitsch keeps Dante’s overall and detail structure of 33 Cantos or chapters but rewrites the epic in modern Australian English. Dante’s medieval list of sins, his characters and events are replaced with Australian ones, while the mountain is flattened out to encompass the continent of Australia. Over this geography, the new poem deals with issues of art and creativity, and the development of a poetic voice.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'It is impossible to understand how Kelen settled on the diverse subjects he has written on between the years 1978 to 2019. Regardless, the poems presented in Love’s Philosophy are given the same imaginative, romantic treatment—be it the great outdoors or a video game. Kelen’s vigorous style is much like his ‘Leech’— it goes for the jugular.'

(Source: publisher's blurb)

'Atherton’s treatment of the prose poem in Leftovers creates a synæsthesia-like experience. Her inventive regard of ordinary things triggers a breadth of sensations and memories, blurring in and out of her real world and her other ‘real’ world of literary fiction.'

(Source: publisher's blurb)