AustLit

'Greetings all. Just a few words and a few more words about this anthology and how it came about. The idea for the collection came from a discussion, in Istanbul, between myself and Les Wicks at the International Poetry Festival there, a few years ago. It was a discussion involving some Turkish poets and translators as well.'  (Introduction)

'`To End All Wars' was a phrase applied hopefully during `The Great War'. Its various permutations were meant to suggest that this one might be the last war of all. How quickly the phrase became ironic. How many wars have followed! The words `to end all wars' must remind us today that all armed conflict is a vast social catastrophe. The centenary of the World War I Armistice comes with a barely veiled triumphalism in the countries that were victorious one hundred years ago. It was that triumphalism, and the failed peace that followed it, which led onto new catastrophes in World War II and then the Cold War.

'Now, well into the twenty first century, with ever uglier nationalisms raising their heads everywhere, it is time to critically examine the Armistice of one hundred years ago, and its meaning for Australia and for the world, then and now.' (Publication summary)

'Ålvik – setting for the poems in this book – is a sleepy little industrial town, set between the Hardanger Fjord and its own little mountain for climbing. Behind Ålvik the serious mountains go on forever, all the length of Norway, till there’s almost no more north. 

'The town is brightly painted and decorated with laughter – a children’s town, if you remember. The artists and the poets, the singers, the musicians – they live in a fairytale house, where winter is always coming, even when it has arrived. But spring is pressing too, and summer is an open book, where the blue goes up forever and a day will never end. The forest is the poor man’s coat. Step in – let other worlds elapse. Read the leaves as they lie fallen. Follow the trail of light.'   (Publication summary)