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)
 

'Australian literary icon Geoff Goodfellow is renowned for his brutally evocative poetry: famously performed on building sites, at factories and jails, and in mental institutions, as well as the traditional schools and literary festivals. Martin Flanagan says he reads 'like an angry red nerve'.

'But this playful, tender, richly realised childhood memoir - his first prose collection - reveals the vulnerable side of the working-class boy from Copley Street. Growing up in Adelaide's inner-northern suburbs, Geoff inherits a quick mind and quicksilver tongue from his father, a tender but troubled war veteran (and talented glassblower) who struggled with alcoholism. Geoff's dad teaches him to make things with his hands, staunch loyalty to family, to charm and cajole - and perhaps most enduringly, to tell stories.

'So we follow young Geoff as he takes his first job as a milkman's assistant, aged five, fixes up his first motorbike aged eleven, flirts with housewives (and punches out his boss for insulting his dad) in his first job as an apprentice butcher aged fifteen, and hitchhikes to Mount Gambier to work on oil rigs aged seventeen.

'This is a poignant snapshot of working-class Australian life in the 1950s and 60s, expertly rendered with the vivid lived detail and wry knockabout humour that Geoff Goodfellow is famous for.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

''The People's Poet Transformed is a gem of a book positioned beautifully to engage young people with language so that they see how powerful literature can be created out of everyday life, deeply and sensitively observed. Road-tested by teachers, it encourages students to become creators of ideas and texts and to use language to transform both texts and their own view of themselves as people with stories worth hearing.' - Garry Costello, Former secondary principal, English teacher and Chief Education Officer for DECD, South Australia

''Geoff Goodfellow has been an outspoken voice in schools over many years, engaging thousands of students through his poems to think about contemporary issues with his honesty, passion and wit. This wonderful publication combines Geoff's powerful poetry and prose with Rebecca Bond's creative teaching practice to provide excellent approaches to the compulsory Transformation Task in the new SACE Stage 1 English course, as well as Stage 2 English Literary Studies.' - Alison Robertson, Pesident, South Australian Teachers' Association

''To see Geoff Goodfellow perform is to be caught up in vignettes of experience and observation that become dramatically real. Geoff's collaboration with educator Rebecca Bond is that rare find - an engaging and accessible text that actually works in the classroom. The People's Poet Transformed is worthy of immediate use by teachers and students; directly relevant to Senior English, Geoff's new book will quickly become a "go to" resource for those seeking inspiration for any transformative task.' - Richard Noone, Curriculum Leader English, Westminster School, South Australia

''Geoff Goodfellow knows all about transformation. His poetry unerringly conveys a multiplicity of profound messages to those from any place or background - important human messages of life, death, love, hate, despair, hope, sadness and joy, transformative emotions all. Maybe, just maybe, burrowing deep into this wonderful new book will assist you with your own incredible, life-affirming personal transformation! Let's open it and find out ...' - Lloyd Cook, English Senior, Geelong Grammar, Victoria' (Publication summary)

'After a few weeks, one young woman's husband arced up and Mike had to tell both blokes to pull up on their drinking or they'd be off the roster. En Sviveldash, if yoo are serving za customer en za customer vonts yor top layer, or za peece rite at za frunt, make shore yoo rest vun finger on za scales ven yoo veigh for price.' (Introduction)

'Geoff Goodfellow has performed his poetry to prisoners and primary-school children, in tiny pubs and at international literary festivals. Opening the Windows to Catch the Sea Breeze showcases Geoff's personal favourites, poems that audiences have requested time and again.' (Publication summary)