Böcker utgivna av Ginninderra Press

These stories are about being young, getting old, and life in between. An Australian teenage girl in 1970s country NSW waits in a wet, wintery, small New Zealand town for the arrival of her illicit lover, and the decision that will change her life, 'Mary's Story'. Three children are washed out to sea clinging to an upturned table when floods sweep away the family farmhouse in the historically based 'The Flood'. In 'Conditions Apply', an invalid and lonely old man tires of looking at the world from his front window and hires a tree-loving female carer, but each has their own agenda. Other stories are surreal or whimsical. In 'Superman', a young wannabe novelist works in an abandoned phone box, then he meets the man of the title, the one-time all-American hero, now reduced to a depressed tattered ikon of the past. A boy's pursuit of a butterfly sets off an unexpected cause and affect chain in 'Revenge of the Butterfly'. There is humour here, sometimes sadness, sometimes anger, but always there is compassion for the human condition.

Writing these sestinas has brought to mind all the amazing lives that have touched mine and have made me realise just how precious every single strand has been. The sestina was invented by the twelfth-century mathematician Arnaud Daniel. The end words of the first stanza are repeated in a set formula throughout the poem. I have found this form of poetry thrilling and addictive.

'With freedom of movement and association seriously curtailed during lockdown, Carmel Macdonald Grahame and Karen Throssell found instead an opportunity for liberty of mind - to recollect, richly embroider, and feel into other lives and vistas. This book showcases the agile creativity - dress-up boxes of the imagination - of these two eloquent poets, whose complementary voices are combined here with vibrant synergy.' - Anne M Carson

The story of Tristan is well known in the Western tradition of Romance. Few have not heard of Wagner's opera and the love elixir which Tristan and Iseut drink by accident. The story is already well established in the early medieval period, where there are several competing manuscripts, most of them incomplete for various reasons. John Watson has revisited these medieval origins and achieved a synthesis, a complete Tristan. Here are the sea voyages, the ill-fated love potion, the black or white sail hoisted as a signal. And here, re-imagining the whole, Watson has made a fitting companion piece to his earlier The Tale of Gawain (GinninderraPress).

A number of the works in this collection centre on the notion of 'the journey'. In all instances, it is ultimately an inner personal one, psychic or spiritual in nature in accordance with whatever term best resonates with the reader. For the author, the journey is a search for meaning, a place of habitation and belonging, of reflective respite away from the round of daily struggle and mere survival, a wondrous space where pause for thought, silence and peace allow an upsurge of creation and culture to blossom. Regret, sorrow and deep-felt yearning, epiphanies overturning gloom and remaking the world into something new and beautiful, touches of lightness and humour, all these will be met with here

Driving into the Dark is a collection of poems published over the last five years. There are narrative poems and poems that respond to daily life and to world events. They reflect upon life's precious moments, its vagaries, its joys and the nature of love and loss.

'Borrowed Riches is an apt title for this fine collection of 100 short lyrics composed by an experienced and skilful poet. With her deft usage of the traditional Japanese tanka form, Julie Thorndyke presents to the reader a range of thoroughly modern, yet universal, emotions expressed in poetry. The centrality of family, human relationships and love is a recurring motif. There are also descriptive pieces featuring birds and flowers, poems about Julie as an author and editor, introspective writing, romance, and nostalgia. A rich array of tanka indeed. And one which is not without some gentle humour. Bravo!' - Amelia Fielden, poet and translator'With the eye and heart of a poet and her own personal experience, Julie Thorndyke gifts us 100 tanka with universal themes including love, loss, and life - often in the exquisite frame of nature, blooming with birds, trees, flowers, the moon. When tanka are holistic, palpable, and redemptive, you find soul touching moments for the journey. In Borrowed Riches we have a new book to read unhurriedly, that will challenge, affirm, reassure and give us those moments.' - Colleen Keating'To open the pages of Borrowed Riches is to enter a calm and contemplative world. Julie Thorndyke's keen observations of nature strike a deep chord and her insight into the nature of time and relationships is profound. This tanka collection is an important addition to any bookshelf.' - Vanessa Proctor

Welcome to Live Poets' 30 Years at Don Bank, focusing particularly on the years 2015 to the present. We look back to our first decade in publishing. There are special chapters on the Live Poets Players and other events where music and art have featured. We salute the icons of Live Poets past. We look at how the Live Poets interview was initiated. We track our monthly meetings with our annual competitions and atmosphere features like 'Literary Cities', cultural and travel eye-witness responses, historical testaments, and so on. Of course we have poems and stories from many of our guests and our regulars and new found friends in the Open Section or providing conversations over supper in the courtyard. But, as much as individuals have directed traffic with their idiosyncrasies in verse, story and song, our group efforts too have made their mark. We've been louder and more collective more often, it seems. May that continue the more the future and the fortunes of our heir

'Born into a once indentured or girmit ('agreement') Indian family in Fiji, and having studied in India and the UK and taught in India and Fiji, Satendra Nandan lays claim to 'a fortunate life'. It has also been an exemplary life to those of us who aspire to understanding and sympathy across the borders of culture and ethnicity, race and nation. This is a personal book of love and loss, life and death, as its author retraces the lives and revisits the deaths of those he has loved most. It is also a tribute to friendship: indeed, friendship is at once the glory and the burden of Satendra's narrative. What reconciles us to what he deplores as 'the fragility of existence and the vulnerability of human life' is precisely the human relationships established over the course of a full and felt life. The author of many recollections and reflections, Satendra is still able to surprise and move us to revisit our own pasts, and the pastness of the past, in order to rediscover what we thought we already knew. Satendra's reflections on his own life resemble nothing so much as a Wordsworthian elegy in which the consolation he is seeking on his own and on the reader's behalf inheres in the very power and self-evident value of what has been lost.' - William Christie, Head, Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University; Director, Australasian Consortium of Humanities Research Centres

Still at his desk in Long Jetty on the Central Coast of NSW, Australia, Sean Crawley continues his series of short stories and musings on life, death and navigating an uncertain world. Written between March 2020 and April 2021, his writing reflects the changes that did occur because of the pandemic and what stayed exactly the same.

The tanka form, in which these short lyrics on nature were composed, is that of traditional Japanese poetry. In classical Japanese, the expression meaning 'leaves', kotonoha, is a homonym for 'words'. Both are also written identically, in Kanji characters which join 'say' with 'leaf/leaves'. Kotonoha can also refer to waka, the pre-modern designation for tanka poems.

The poems in Richard Stanton's new collection are inspired by landscape and imagination with frequent collisions between the two. Richard's first collection was Seven Car Loads of What You Need. He is also the author of Enngonia Road.

'Ouyang Yu's Foreign Matter rages against the vacuity of suburban life, alert to every racist slight, with a linguistic playfulness that shuffles and bounces through English language via the "e;gibberish keyings of an irrelevant computer"e;. Here Australia is often depicted as an unabashed identity-less dystopia, a volatile yet bland melting-pot of adopted and imported cultures, a "e;prisonful"e; of freedom. From Melbourne's bay of "e;muddy fury"e;, to uneventful suburbs and mown lawns, displaced characters flicker through anger and resignation, cynicism or bemusement, or even psychological breakdown - as sharply depicted in the sequence "e;Lines Written at the Melbourne Mental"e; that plays on the word 'home'. These prickly observations untangle the enduring uneasiness that's felt in both past and present countries, inhabiting a house "e;made of time"e; more than of space. Relentlessly critical, Ouyang's jagged nuanced poems shred any boundaries, fuelled by their clear-eyed "e;foreign matter"e; that is both catalyst and lament.' - Gig Ryan

Composed during Covid-19, these poems reveal the fragility of life and the strength of love in dark times. The poet finds solace in the little things of life: a cup of coffee with a friend, a walk by the seashore with her family, in the quiet loveliness of the natural environment, in the dailiness of living even as death seems around the corner. The poems recall the poet's life and memories of loved ones from Suva, Canberra and Delhi, places in the heart.'With deceptive lightness, gentle irony and surprising insight, Return to what remains carries the sadness, frustration and affection of living in a time of human separation.' - Marcelle Freiman, Sydney

This is a welcome retrospective of Ray Tyndale's poetry, carefully chosen by Peggy Mares from a vast collection of favourite and new work. No surprise to anyone that it turns out to be mostly about women.

'In Medicine as a Human Science, Dr Norelle Lickiss explores the telos of medicine and the vocation of its practitioners. It is a small collection of essays, written in elegantly simple prose, but profound in its impact. Dr Lickiss's ecological conception of medical practice presents the doctor-patient relationship, based on mutual respect, as the central dynamic of the art and science of healing. Based on her long experience as a consultant in oncology and palliative medicine, this renowned physician shares what she has learned and sketches a vision of medicine much needed in the world today.' - Jack Coulehan MD, MPH'The teachings of Professor Lickiss are well reflected in this series of her philosophical essays, which Jean Curthoys has put together in one compendium. Ms Curthoys is to be congratulated for bringing these essays together. Some of them are old lectures which have not previously been published, but they will now remain an important resource for future generations.' - Neville F. Hacker AM

V8 takes you on a journey in every form of vehicle, from the car to the bicycle, the ute to the train. Two poets reflect on their love of cars, the issues that arise from transport, and the many roads they have travelled.

In 'Dynamo' the antics of a dog cause trouble for his owners. In 'Running the Gauntlet' two wannabee cattle rustlers start out on a hapless pursuit. A year 10 student finds a hoped-for friend has a dark side in 'Killing Two Birds'. A teenager's yearning for more height has a strange outcome in 'There Are More Things'. Enjoy these and six more stories in this diverse collection.

In this selection of compelling short stories, Liz Newton takes the reader into the lives of others, where relationships and families are dissected and reimagined. A myriad of characters, across different landscapes, weave their journeys of loss, love and survival through everyday and oftentimes unusual circumstances.

Leaf-dappled Light offers a glimpse into the life and times of the author. A life devoted to learning, teaching, creating. Years of revisiting, rewriting, and honing have produced a collection of poems that reflect a man who didn't shy away from difficult things. A love of the world, of nature and people, shines through the pages. The finely crafted words make his world tangible to the senses and to the heart.