Newly published

Peter Murphy is one of Australia’s most respected poets. His new collection is a generous and ambitious project.

Reflective and joyful in equal measure, profound and playful, Finishing Stroke is rare in offering a deceptively playful immediacy which reveals more and more of its intellectual antecedents on reflection and re-reading.

His work is a linguistic and visual joy.

Decorating Pain is a confronting collection by Rosie Bogumil, a five time winner of the prestigious Randolph Stowe Award, who is perhaps better known to spoken word fans as Rosie Bee.

In these searing poems, Rosie captures the raw reality of a life lived alongside depression, anxiety, eating disorders and PTSD, but she also records an uplifting account of the triumph of self-acceptance.

This first collection heralds a rich and skilful new poetic voice.

For Emma and Elvis follows Michael and Emma as they make their way through the turmoil of the sixties and seventies – the social and political upheavals, the joy and the grief – in Australia and the world.

Charles Hall conducts us through the fantasy world of the past where a packet of cigarettes, a gallon of petrol, or a 26 oz bottle of beer cost forty cents; where violence against women was a 'domestic', and therefore of no consequence; where young men, too young to vote, were sent to fight and die in Vietnam.

For Emma and Elvis is a radiant remembrance of a long-gone Australia, but it is also the story of relationships in turmoil, of the dissolution of trust, of the discovery of the true and lasting.

Unearthly Pleasures is a new collection of poems from one of Australia's leading poets, Steve Evans.

This is a sparkling collection of poetry from a mature poet at the top of his game. The poems radiate the generous warmth of an acute observer of humanity who manages to maintain his affection and understanding for the people and situations which populate his world. Steve Evans has the remarkable ability to observe and maintain an objective distance while still engaging directly and passionately with his subjects.

Convictions of the Heart is a new collection from US poet, John L. Holgerson. The collection is divided in two parts. The first part, Hydra, is Holgerson’s delicate paean to an island he fell in love with when he first visited in 1970 and to which he still returns. The second part, Other Places, Other People, moves the setting from the Aegean Sea to explore the loves and lives of the poet’s experience away from Hydra.

What unifies the whole collection is Holgerson’s masterful exploration of a fascination with memory, time, and experience and the shifting perspective that comes with arrival, leaving, recalling, returning.

This is an important collection from a masterful poet, at once challenging and reassuring, insightful and comforting.

Todd in Venice is a sparklingly playful script, full of linguistic acrobatics and sexual intrigue, where gender is as fluid as the reality of the city in which it is set. Inspired by Thomas Mann's Der Tod in Venedig (Death in Venice), Sofia Chapman takes her readers on a guided tour of Venice and humanity, by turns poignant, funny, provocative, and joyful.

Warmly received by audiences at its opening, Todd in Venice is a richly rewarding play to read, allowing a full appreciation of the skilful layering of meaning and language. Truly a delight!