AustLit

'Wolf Ghosts – Alys Jackson ‘This is highly visual work. It dances with effective short lines and shows an ability to hook the reader with a strong closing image or idea. Wolf Ghosts frequently takes the natural world, and especially animals, as its subject. It depicts that world as vulnerable one minute and threatening or, at least, indifferent to humans, at the next. The landscape revealed might devour us if we are not careful. If there is sometimes a sombre atmosphere in these poems, edged with a sense of impending loss, the effect is not so much bleak and hopeless as thought-provoking. It is a timely approach and a well-wrought collection.’

'Shifting Viewpoints – Julia Wakefield ‘This collection draws its inspirations, its reference points, from many sources and subjects. The author seems restless, looking not to be pinned to one style or a predictable opinion. That elusiveness keeps the poems fresh and is a large part of its charm, with narrating perspectives that challenge reader expectations. There is darkness in its humour, delivered with a wink in depictions that can sometimes be whimsical or obviously surreal. The work includes sharp portrayals of nature, celebrating it and weighing up our place in it. Shifting Viewpoints does what it says on the tin, while offering a welcome adventurous outlook in its scope and multiple perspectives.’

'Finding Their Voices – Sharon Foulkes ‘The poems in Finding Their Voices often address moments of stress that ask key questions of the reader, explicitly or not. They vary widely in focus, for example from the domestic arena, such as a fraught ‘hand-over’ of a child on a custody weekend, to a catastrophic encounter with a bushfire as it engulfs a farm. Other topics captured with precision involve life in an industrial country town and the joie de vivre of childhood. The language shifts between a more determinedly poetic voice and plainer speech, the latter often being delivered in a diaristic manner. The poems are character-laden and the richer for it.’ (Publication summary)

'The Infinite Dirt presents the most outstanding poems from Friendly Street Poets’ 38th year. The anthology digs deep into the preoccupations of South Australia’s poets, from the ground surface right down to what T.S. Eliot called “the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being”'. (Publisher's summary)

'John Pfitzner - Fence Music

ethereal tones, luminously pure,/ high in the cold sky of an outback night,/ the scrape of wind on corrugated iron,/ the noon throb of sun-steeped air

John Pfitzner achingly connects the spirit to the land in poems borne of thought, experience and deep consideration. Find solace and hope in his words.

'Gareth Roi Jones - Gunyah Healing

a farm is a brutal place/ but it reinforces/ life either goes on/ / or it doesn't

Gareth Roi Jones' quick wit touches the making and mending of relationships, turning surprisingly and lightly at each poem's end. Read your own stories in his lines.

'Rachael Mead - Sliding Down the Belly of the World

Nine degrees south of the Equator,/ I'm perched on/ the full belly of the world

Rachael Mead plots daily concerns of home and abroad, ranging across the globe in wild imaginative conversations with self and others. In her poems you can bask and be illuminated.' Publication summary)