AustLit

'Award-winning poet Geoff Goodfellow is back with another vivid, affecting, laconically dark-witted collection that pulls no punches as it masterfully chronicles Australian life.

'Filtered through Geoff's uniquely powerful perspective, these poems capture growing up with a charismatic but damaged father, the aftermath of broken marriages - and parenting amidst the rubble, the working life of a poet (including prank calls from entitled students), and dealing with cancer - again.

'As always, Geoff delivers a series of brilliantly captured portraits of working-class life, from the street scenes of formerly industrial Port Adelaide and his home suburb of Semaphore, with its heightened blend of affluence and poverty, to his fearless inhabitations of teenagers beset by home lives that feature domestic violence and addiction.

'And as a treat, there's 'Don't Look So Glum', a female-voiced version of his iconic masculine poem 'Don't Call me Lad'. (Publication summary)