AustLit

'Anything the Landlord Touches was Emma Lew's second collection to be published in Australia, where it was published by Giramondo of Newcastle, NSW, in 2002. The book won the C.J. Dennis Prize for Poetry (the Victorian State Premier's award for poetry), and the Judith Wright Calanthe Award (the Queensland Premier's Prize for Poetry), two of the main literary prizes in the country, and was also short-listed for The Age award and the NSW and South Australian Premier’s Literary Prizes. Her first collection, The Wild Reply (Black Pepper Press, 1997) won The Age award. Emma Lew's poetry is marked by the pungency of her language and the dramatic intensity of her poems, often couched in the form of estranged monologues. Her lines can sometimes seem disconnected, but the pile-up of effects works like a montage, and the skewed observations circle their subject, searching for the core reality at the heart of the poem. This book is published in the UK and the USA by arrangement with Giramondo Publishing.' (Publication summary)