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The four poets in this collection were born in the 1930s: Vivian Smith at Hobart in 1933; Margaret Scott at Bristol in the United Kingdom (1934); Syd Harrex at Smithton (1935) and Graeme Hetherington at Latrobe (1937). Apart from Gwen Harwood (born in the previous decade), these four writers made one of the most extensive contributions to Tasmanian poetry in the last decades of the twentieth century. Collectively, over one thousand of their poems have appeared in magazines and selected works from 1950 to the present day, and thirty-three editions of their poetry have been published (eleven by Smith, eight by Hetherington and seven by both Scott and Harrex).

"e;The extraordinary poems in Witches, Women and Words have our hearts beating with rage. This powerfully evocative collection speaks frankly of the twists and turns, pains, despair and hopes of the woman, the human, the poet, the abused earth, her trees and seas and biodiversity. In a world where 'soldiers march blindfolded and mute' and of 'wounds that never heal'. It takes us on a journey: a witch's broom, protection of a coven, and a cauldron of life's struggles, to become free to allow the poem of woman to be created: 'the poem born / the poet / a god'. She will have a voice, choose her destiny. You will be spellbound as you navigate these sensuous and imaginative poems where 'the persistent Southerly / is a foreigner on this piece of soil' and 'senses are like a tree in winter'. This is not meant to be a peaceful read. This powerful collection of poetry by Beatriz Copello disturbs like her muse Neruda, with 'words of fire, steel and hope', even as she writes, 'hope is hidden like a miser hides his riches'."e; - Colleen Keating"e;Can we conjure a better world with the magic of words? Can women, in particular, escape the cruel prison of history? Beatriz Copello believes so. Though she is 'scared she learns to walk again' and 'lets her blood run wild' in Witches, Women and Words. Even as the horrors of history reassert themselves, even when she is blindsided by the familiarity of death and haunted by lingering wounds in an atmosphere heavy with unspoken guilt, she 'chooses life'. With wit, passion and grace, and above all infinite empathy for the pains we all share, she chooses it for all of us."e; - Richard James Allen"e;Beatriz Copello's words take us on a profound journey through the perilous life we all find ourselves leading, where hope is hidden and ancestral anguish drives us to seek meaning and hope."e; - Anne Summers

The Bare Hook is Rod Usher's fourth collection. His poems have appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies, including Best Australian Poems 2015, the Proverse Prize anthology (Hong Kong) 2021, Best Australian Love Poems, the Grieve Prize anthology, the Newcastle Poetry Prize anthology 2020, and the ACU Prize anthology, where in 2021 a poem in this collection, 'Marginal Notes', won a $1,000 award. The late Les Murray, who published some twenty of Usher's poems, said of his earlier collection, Smiling Treason, 'I laughed out loud at times, I inwardly cried at other times.' Usher, who grew up in Melbourne, is a former literary editor of The Age and senior writer and editor for TIME magazine in Europe. He lives in Extremadura, Spain. He has also published three novels, most recently Poor Man's Wealth (HarperCollins).

Life can become a race against time if you allow it. Slow down occasionally, and you are apt to find that time pauses too. Some of my most indelible memories have been formed in such moments and a few are recollected in this slim volume. I hope they spark resonance and enjoyment.This is the fifth volume of my poems published by Ginninderra Press, and I am grateful to Stephen and Brenda Matthews for their continued support. Stephen was awarded the Order of Australia in 2021 for his services to publishing, a well-deserved honour, for he has given great opportunities to many Australian poets over the past twenty-five years. I count myself fortunate to have been one of them.

From the Eyre Highway to the tiled lanes of Lisbon, and the muted Australian suburbs at the beginning of a pandemic, Bone Picker presents vignettes of place and memory that draw on senses of belonging, movement, and conflict. These imagistic glimpses into everyday life and work highlight the beauty and intrigue in the quotidian.

In Simply, Little Poems, John O'Connell celebrates, in lucid and finely wrought language, the wonder and beauty in everyday things. Simply, Little Poems is a book to be treasured and shared.

In his first week of research in Sydney's Mitchell Library, where he sat, unearthing the life of Louisa Lawson, mother of Henry, for his first radio play in 1956, Brian Hungerford lost concentration when he noticed a boxed paragraph about an illiterate, teenage-convict girl who had demolished the ruling 'exclusives', a group of magistrates led by the Reverend Samuel Marsden. There was no further information. The play on Louisa Lawson was a great success and after two months, of daily research, Brian eventually discovered his convict's name: Ann Rumsby. For several years, he researched Ann Rumsby in the Mitchell Library, the National Library in Canberra and even the National Museum in London. Eventually, he was to reveal a girl who had fought colonial perversion and brutality against women and brought about a new Australia and the introduction of trial by jury. Brian returned to Australia after twenty years on secondment to FAO (Food and Agriculture of the UNO) and settled down to write a three-act play on Ann Rumsby. The play had a level of success, but he was not satisfied. He was still in love with the girl and wanted more of her. Finally he rested after this book. Ann Rumsby was a girl who all Australians should honour.

'Nasrin Mahoutchi-Hosaini's first collection of short fiction reveals symmetries of memory, hauntings and exile. Her fictional worlds conjure enchanted waterways, devilish spirits, the Iranian Folkloric and the unexplored Australian suburbia of immigrants. Her dark lens exposes the fault lines in marriages, bewilderments between cultures and the deathly games humans play. Her vision is the season of metissage between the ancient and modern Middle East and the West of myth.' - Christopher Cyrill, Senior Editor, Aletheia Literary Quarterly

Responses to poems in Figure in the Landscape - Dirk Kruithof, commenting on the poems about art/artists and music/musicians'Danny's poems are compellingly enjoyable. (I've just raced through those, have you got any more?) They are human, perceptive and idiosyncratic - he's not afraid to cut through the lazy conventions of thought.'George Clark, responding to the sequence 'Spain, Are you Here (early 1980s)''There is so much poetry in Spanish history! You have caught it like Laurie Lee in his book A Rose for Winter. The surly Basques are there too and the Duende: 'be aware that Death comes to all.' The last line in your sequence - 'We all have a Spanish mother' - is a great compliment to all our mothers. You have created windows in time.'Les Wicks, responding to poems with turns of contemporary commentary - a wide mix'Really excited revisiting your work. There is a realism that is sharp enough to wound. But always engaged, human.'Martin Langford'These poems vary from personal experiences and travel accounts (south-west Tasmania, the Finke River) to meditations on historical events. Often the poems seize on potent images: a blanket made from human hair in Auschwitz, the nightmare of Jan Pelgrom de Bye, put ashore for mutiny on the WA coast in 1629 or Reinhold Messner's pursuit of the Yeti. They are poems with a contemporary imagination and curiosity, containing both a stubborn political insistence and a very modern doubt about the direction of history and the speaker's relationship to the landscape.'Philip Radmall, responding to the sequence 'From Arles, Provence''The beautifully crafted realism of these poems is both personal and relevatory. We are drawn gently into the intimacies and particulars of Vincent's world, the physical, every day world around him - and then take a new breath at the profundity and vulnerability inherent in each encounter with it. Each poem is a dazzling vignette, a direct insight into an artist's passion, into the questionings and realisations of a man travailling but rejoicing in the great mysteries of art and life.'Philip Radmall, responding to the sequence 'Thameside Cohorts (early 1980s)'In each poem we meet with vivid, eye-opening images that come off the page and whirl about us as we thrill to the bold realities of 1980s London: rough streets, run-down train stations, boxing gyms and seedy East End rooms, and all the visitants of these, illumined with a stark, backlit grunge that is raw, confronting and alive. We too become the visitants here, haunting the same sights, sensing the same offerings - so evocative is the journey through.'

'These stories draw us into the many worlds of Carol Patterson's imagination and experience, and we immediately become invested, as readers, in the characters and the dilemmas they face. The narrative thrust, along with skilfully constructed dialogue, lead us through the underbrush of human emotions, make us scale the dangerous slopes of risk and loss, hope and abandonment, and take us through torrents toward still waters, or beckon us to further reaches beyond.' - Dr Terry Whitebeach'What a wealth of lived experience and imagination Carol brings to her writing. And lovely, compelling imagery. She has the ability to transform her experience into something unique and beautiful.' - Jianna Miller'Carol Patterson writes with consummate subtlety of the vast submerged inner lives of ordinary people. With her careful craft and sensitive touch, Patterson deserves our recognition as one of our most outstanding short fiction writers.' - Robyn Friend

Uncle is a term for men connected to family not necessarily by blood, but by love. They can become second fathers, sometimes closer to a child than their real father. In Indigenous society, to call someone Uncle is a sign of respect. Michael Connor has just returned from Uluru, where he saw the creator God, Biame, in all his glory within the coal sack nebula of the Milky Way. In the form of an emu, his head abutting the Southern Cross, he keeps an eye out for us all. Michael finds it hard to settle back into city life. His Uncle, Ayden Oak, is dying. He tells his nephew he has written his life story in two exercise books, and asks if could help make it into a book. Ayden grew up in a humpy on a vacant block with his dark-skinned mum, Kalina. They scratched a living from selling vegetables. From Kalina, he learnt a history of his country not taught in schools. Uncles appeared in and out of his life, to help Ayden along the way. As a kid, Ayden was called 'Abo' and at one stage held down on the school asphalt playground, to be repeatedly kicked in the balls. That's why they think he could never have kids. When Michael was a boy, Uncle Ayden used to come around every Friday night and read the Connor children Irish fairy stories. Michael was haunted by Oscar Wilde, and told his Uncle that's why he became a writer. Ayden's life story includes a history of his people from so-called 'settlement' right up until today. At times, this book is not an easy read, but then the truth never is.

Muscle Memory is the debut collection by Australian poet M.E. Berkley. A collage of words capturing moments from her life, an unfiltered glimpse into the realities of mental health, grief, healing, religious trauma, lovers come and gone, Muscle Memory keeps no secrets.

'There's a delicious and compelling weight beneath the surface of Gina Mercer's poems - like a wave with a lick of undertow. Their touch, the silk of their deep-bodied hold, tugs us into each new encounter. There's an exquisite closeness at play here - sensual, yes, and irresistibly transporting. Full of intrigue, full of presence and possibility. I hope never to fully return from the immersion Watermark offers.' - Kristen Lang, Earth Dwellers, Giramondo Publishing'The poems in Watermark scintillate like sunlight on the River Derwent; cascade down memory's canyons, carving deeper; flood the imagination's tidal shores and, receding, leave a beachcomber's bounty of epiphanies in tide-pools. The interspersed "extracts" from her imaginary Dictionary of Water are liquid gems of witty, magical invention. Whether swimming in Tasmanian waters or walking the Atlantic shores of Prince Edward Island, Mercer poignantly witnesses and honours the interplay of humans and water. Fog, laundry water, clouds, cruise ship bilgewater, dragonfly ripple. She graciously gifts us the fleeting marks we make on water, the permanent marks water imprints in us.' - Professor Richard Lemm, University of Prince Edward Island

Pamir is the story of a ship, from her building in 1905 to her loss at sea in 1957. She was one of the last of her kind, a celebration of the age of sail, of a seaman's craft developed over thousands of years, only to lose out eventually to steam. Adrian Rogers has told her story as a tribute to all those who kept the world's trade going through the centuries, at great risk to themselves, and often with very little reward. Their memory deserves to be honoured.

Glimpses of Earth collects moments of clarity in the search for belonging. The bush is the bedrock of the work, which explores a beauty seen away from humankind, the coming alive of the world when you let yourself go. Old lessons hide out there, in shaded clearings and animal tracks. In the mirror of life provided by other beings are conversations about love, about being enough, about knowing who you are. There is grief, for environmental catastrophes felt from afar. There is praise, there is awe that inspires life, there is love, gratitude and deep appreciation for the marvels of Earth. 'In Glimpses of Earth we are privileged to glimpse the mind of Leo Lazarus, a new poetic voice speaking in the language of nature. He takes us into the world of trees, sun, moon, water, insects and animals and all that we can learn from them as mere humans in their thrall. We can do well to read these poems and appreciate nature for all her gifts in the gift of this poetry. I welcome Leo to the pantheon of poets whose voice is a breath of fresh air.' - Sandy Jeffs OAM

'Raymond writes of all he has loved in a backwards-travelling anthology that brings together the great events of Brisbane history and the small events of daily life. He writes about wars and extermination and convicts on the triangle in Queen Street. He writes about a possum like a "e;friendly lout"e; and boiled eggs and honey on the breakfast table. Old, wild love affairs begin and end in these poems. We meet Bob Dylan and remember Enid Blyton and creaming soda and afternoon matinees with Danny Kaye. It is a mixture of joy, sadness, rage, laughter and passion, celebrating a life that has been full of surprises. Give yourself a treat and read Reeling Backwards slowly.' - Sandra Hogan, author of With My Little Eye 'With the mind of a historian and the soul of an artist, Evans turns his gaze back over a life lived large and fierce - determined to resist the hidebound milieu and humid statis of his home city, Brisbane. Reeling Backwards plays at the knotty edges of nostalgia, bending and folding time around place, while pausing to catch all the fleeting, sensory moments that make up an abundant life. Each poem is a skipping stone, a gentle disturbance, nicking the surface and rippling outwards.' - Melanie Myers, award-winning author of Meet Me at Lennons'Careful readers of Raymond Evans's histories always sensed he was a poet at heart. In this collection, he demonstrates this truth. The poems, which "e;arrived out of the blue"e;, are personal and historical - a moving lesson in how to understand who we are and where we come from - individually and collectively. Read and savour.' - Julianne Schultz, author and former editor of Griffith Review'Raymond Evans writes of history, home and heart with wisdom and warmth. From an empty house to a childhood home filled with love. Travelling backwards through time across a life portrayed in sensuous images. So lovely to read - highly recommended.' - Edwina Shaw, author and editor of Bjelke Blues'A rollicking ride...and fun! Piercing in its emotional description of intangible realities we can all relate to. Such powerful, astute observations about secrets of the heart, granting permission to own and acknowledge one's often discarded sensibilities - written with intellect and artistry. Bravo! Contemporary and enthralling!' - Sue Smithers, international model, actress and jazz chanteuse

"e;In Glimmers of Light, Decima Wraxall gives us an array of poems graphically written, as she says, with the 'struggle to understand our troubled society and who we might be'. The dark moments of our world, the injustices, disorder, struggles and losses of the past few years are loud, with many poems on the Covid attack. Masks and hospitals add narrative detail from Decima's medical background. The title conveys that in the darkness there is light even if it be only pinpricks in a black sky or a bruised horizon at dawn, 'stopping for the warble of a magpie' in the poem 'A Fountain Dances', 'the delight of an introspective Sauvignon blanc' in 'I am Lived', or 'sharing billy tea under whispering casuarinas' in 'Defiance'. We know that as with Vermeer paintings it is only the light that remains. Delve in, and be surprised with many gems on travel, love and history."e; -Colleen Keating

The Davisons seemed a golden couple. Sam is a rich, successful doctor, Leonora his glamourous and loving wife. She is a devoted mother and a tireless fundraiser for many charities. But her husband found another woman and demanded a divorce, and Leonora is on trial for shooting him and his new wife. She broke into their bedroom, the darkened room of the title, shot the woman as she lay in bed and killed her husband while he struggled to reach the phone. Was she a cold-blooded murderer? The greedy, vindictive woman the prosecution described? Or was she a woman driven to madness by an abusive marriage and a bitter divorce that left her demoralised and broken, and in a dissociative state, as her defence lawyer argues?

In The Ruby Red's Affair, Scoot Valuti undertakes a visit to a local lesbian bar/night club, meets up with her friends, and, in search of a lifelong loving relationship based on mutual respect and appreciation, has a brief flirtation which results, sadly, in a serious affair which lasts a nanosecond and ends badly. Just as the characters are ambiguous and androgynous, so is the book difficult to define: a short novel or a verse narrative, or a poetry novella, or... It chronicles both a moment and a lifetime, a transformative mind-blowing encounter and another despondent disappointment.

Ed Grainger returns home from his History Club meeting to find his house swarming with police. His wife Lucy has been murdered. The police identify a number of suspects. Was it Lucy's recently jilted lover, her work colleague robbed of promotion, her lawyer with whom she had a brief affair, Ed's 'unhinged' and jealous stalker and her equally as jealous and bellicose husband, or the young malefactor wanting an inheritance pay-out. Or is it someone else? All is finally revealed. The story is told with an economy of prose and an insight into the human condition.

Born in India, spent nine months of the year at school in the Himalayas, started hunting, shooting and fishing at an early age, Richard Inwood lived life to the full from childhood. His family returned to their roots in England, and he started life at sea. His adventurous life continued, and he began writing. Unfortunately, all his early writings were lost. He left the sea, married and settled in New Guinea with his wife for nine years. They have travelled together where ever the whim took them and he continued writing. Many of his stories are based on his life, and some make hair raising reading. His writing flows, keeping the reader in an absorbing experience of romance, danger and gentle moments, set in many parts of the world.

'Mary Blackwood writes with power and precision. She takes a razor to the times in which we live, slicing away the dross and the cant. She gifts us poetry that is deft, sure, laden with insight. If a poet's task is one of linguistic distillation, a paring down to lay bare the diamantine essence of things, then here is a poet of the very first order. Read these poems - see what language can do.' -- Pete Hay'In Small Cosmos Mary Blackwood vividly captures worlds within worlds, from the desire to go beyond 'the edge of the truth' to the final jigsaw being 'not what you thought at all'. With sharp wit and insight, the poems traverse landscapes of domesticity, ageing, humanity's foibles, the precarious nature of safety and the inevitability of pain. The impact of meticulous crafting and subtle inferences, precision and understatement, is powerful and long-lasting.' - Lyn Reeves

The vast sea with its hissing, black swells surrounds us. Its cajoling, alluring, vindictive voice beckons and things happen. Suffusing the subconscious, the sea is rendered as a capricious backdrop to the frailties, failures and fraudulence of the characters as they fathom psychological or physical depths and test their courage to sink or swim.

Most of us have packed a suitcase or a small bag to go on a journey somewhere... But to pack a suitcase for the last journey of all? The hand luggage, crammed full or almost empty, with which to arrive in heaven? Angela Pritchard's childhood is in post-war London and later she trains as a nurse in one of the big teaching hospitals there. After immigrating to Australia in 1963, her parents are told she is expected to die on an operating table, and nine years later she assists her mother to die with associated concerns for her future professional work. This insightful memoir openly shares these stories of life and end of life. On returning to nursing in Perth, Angela helps many people, including her father, to 'pack their suitcase' for that final journey we all must take.

A poet as beachcomber walks the beach, sometimes with pen and paper, gathering sights and sounds, shells and stones, scents and seagull scenes. Yet it is not always about the waves and wind, for the sea carries the stories of the world; how it connects and disconnects, how it gives and takes, reveals how we treat it. Humanity is always present in its deep moans and its dance of exaltation. When you listen, the ocean has much to say. Pick up Beachcomber and, like Jonathan Livingston Seagull, these poems will take you flying.

Danger. Imprisonment. Death. This is the fate in store for anyone who dares defy the German authorities during their occupation on the island of Jersey during World War II. Undeterred, Lucy Schwob ('Claude') and Suzanne Malherbe ('Marcel') embark upon a campaign of rebellion. By day, the two women present to the world as quiet, cat-loving sisters; in reality they are lovers and saboteurs, using surrealist-inspired artworks to undermine and destabilise a tyrannous regime's power in an environment where no one is to be trusted. Captured in 1944 and faced with the threat of execution or deportation to a concentration camp, Lucy and Suzanne must draw on all their reserves of courage, imagination and tenacity, as well as their deep love, to survive separation, starvation and their own faltering will to live. Bowed but never broken completely, they greet freedom with ambivalence, knowing the price which has been paid for it by so many. Set against a backdrop of surveillance and fear, told in gleaming evocative prose which brings the ever-changing oceanic landscape to life, Claude & Marcel is a story of bittersweet triumph by twinned spirits, the shadow to her light, the electron which dances with her proton, the one seed of a dicotyledon which nestles next to the other.

One of the important things I learned when my poetry was first published was that, no matter how much time and effort I put into ensuring the poems were in what I thought was the right order, my readers would more likely randomly select a piece that caught their attention. It is no different when putting together a selection of poems from several volumes except that when Jude Aquilina did the choosing, I ended up with a very different image of me the writer than I had been aware of before. No longer locked into their chronological order, there emerged in the poems a more balanced perspective. The important things don't change. Depths once touched are always evident. Courage, strength, spirituality, wonder, bewilderment, joy and sorrow are all represented. Above all else, beating within the words and images there is a very thankful heart.

The Alphabet of Women brings together twenty-six eclectic alliterating poets to tell the story of woman through the sounds and cadences of the alphabet. From rage to tenderness, politics to the body, motherhood to daughterhood, vaginas to mother earth, poets were invited to tell it like it is and follow their heart. This anthology is powerful in its diverse expressions of what womanhood means and acknowledges in both subtle and formidable ways how multifaceted and still bravely unifying this story is.