Not Missing a Single Thing is the story, the comprehensive story, of Ray and his journey from 'car crash' to triumph! Ray is a precocious ten year old boy who has had to endure numerous obstacles and difficulties, including the cruelties of bullies and the idiocy of an incompetent teacher. With the encouragement of one of his favourite teachers, he writes down his 'car crash' story as a means of getting the bad stuff out of his system.
Five years later, and a fifteen year old Ray is ready to continue his story. Armed with his trusted HB pencils he chronicles his adventures with unblinking honesty and zest. Will he find love, friendship, happiness, understanding, purpose? Is he capable of saving someone's life, and will he find out if magic really exists? Will he tell a story so resplendent that it can only be compared to a Rajasthani onion and potato curry?
Deeply personal and deeply political, the poems of Kyle-Sidell in A Material Rain are a record, analysis, and critique of current American society. His poetry describes the rage of the impotent, the impotence of the disengaged, and the numbing fog of cynical self-regard that blankets his country.
He spares no one - politicians, lobbyists, the wielders of interest, the indifferent - but always, his most unflinching, most searching examination is turned on himself. He is always looking for the glimmer of an answer, for something with which he can arm himself and those he cares for, to make sense, to give hope, to point the way.
Bogdan Vulpe's empire is ruled with an iron fist. No one disobeys. That had been his way in Romania; so why should the City of Melbourne be any different?
Killing Justice leads you into a world of unbridled violence. Murder, extortion and anything else that Volpe needs to succeed will be used. If he has to take retribution against officers of the highest court in the land, so be it.
This latest challenge to Tony Signorotto and his loyal team is his toughest yet. Not only is he battling a violent criminal gang, but changes in the ranks of his beloved Carlton police force will pit him against an ambitious, careerist police Superintendent more interested in glory than justice. The fight to uphold the laws of the State continue in the gripping fourth instalment of Phil Copsey's Tony Signorotto crime series.
A coming of age story in a family where chaos is normal, the ludicrous is everyday, and the improbable is unexceptional. When you're growing up in such a turbulent environment, what could make it worse? Try adding lots of money, unequally shared!
It Grows on Trees is rollicking ride for Nelson and his astonishing collection of relatives and hangers-on that takes him across generations, several nations, affairs (both love and financial), and somehow or other… out the other side.
Living Fossils are the Happiest Kind is a rare collection: it is both deeply thoughtful and hugely thought provoking. It is written with a masterly poetic skill: spare, exact, clever. It selects its subjects from among the most urgent problems facing our world, and it treats them with an astonishing mixture of scientific understanding, humour, compassion, and just a hint of world weariness.
But this is no dry, didactic diatribe. The entire collection is infused with the poet's love of the natural world, his fascination and frustration with our own species, and a richly humorous outlook which elevates the whole collection with a gentle optimism.
Two Tongue World is a richly evocative collection of poems by the Greek/Australian poet, Maria Koukouvas. Sub titled, The Diaspora Dialogues, the poems are indeed a dialogue between past and present, between the cultures of origin and upbringing, between the generations of a family.
Deeply personal, these poems will strike a chord with everyone affected by the migrant experience and will enlighten and enthral those who have not had to live through the upheaval of migration. Koukouva unflinchingly confronts the pain and exhultation of growing up in the baffling world of the new migrant. She chronicles her growing up at once enveloped and estranged from the culture of her origin, the pain of trying to fit into a new world, and the maturation of a love and acceptance of the cultures, new and old, which have shaped her.
This is an important collection. Koukouvas brings a wonderfully sharp observation to her poems. They are at once clever, poignant, loving, enraged, joyful, and profound.
Adrian Harte's poetry collection is a startling and intense exploration of the poet in his world, with poems of humour, love, violence, trauma. Harte dissects and examines life with honesty and courage and a baffled outrage at the inhumanity of much of the modern world.
Richly evocative, Red Rite Hand is a triumphant first collection, remarkable for the poetic skill of the writer and the control and passion of his work.
Point Blank is a poetry vérité collection of observational poems, written in an immediate, cinematic style. Gary Duehr has an engaging, conversational tone that disguises the poetic craftsmanship of his work. He uses rhyme and half-rhyme with the rhythms of everyday speech to present vignettes of the lives around a detached observer. It creates a complex, nuanced portrait of modern life: think handheld Super 8 movies of apparently random incidents and lives, spliced together to create an intriguing revelation of how we live.
Gary Duehr has created a collection that is immensely enjoyable, clincially accurate, and hypnotically contemplative.
Let the Baby Sleep is a fearlessly exploratory collection of poems. The poet, Patrick T. Reardon, dissects the world of his childhood, his upbringing, his relationships with his parents and siblings, his maturation and growth, and the wrenching shock of his brother's suicide. With extraordinary skill and grace, he exposes the worlds—physical, mental, spiritual—that he inhabited and is forced still to inhabit, and asks us to confront them with him.
This is a rare collection. Reading these poems feels like a privilege that should be reserved for the poet and his family, but the warmth, generosity, humour, and love that permeates the whole is offered without reservation. The poems are, by turns, gentle, harrowing, contemplative, heartfelt, but always insistently demonstrative, insistently declarative. There is no turning away.
The Long and Short of It is a recto-verso book of poetry: the book is formatted to be read from either side. There are no page numbers in the book as the poet has structured the collection by the line length of the poems. From one side (the 'long' side), the poems are arranged from longest to shortest. On the other side, the poems are arranged from shortest to longest.
This is no mere curiosity of the typesetter's art, however. The poet has delivered an intriguing and revealing set of poems which take the reader from the immediate and striking short poems to the contemplative and complex longer poems. Or vice versa.
As the poet advises:
Please feel free to start from either side of the book.
As you read please adjust your perspective accordingly.