Poetry

Believing, as Ezra Pound did, that real emotion is all that endures, Robert Gray has avoided 'magic realism', whismy, irony and mannered tone in his poetry. Instead, his style is classically direct, clear and concrete, demonstrating an Augustan preference for substantial content. The poems of "Nameless Earth" are richly textured in their language; naturally elevated in manner and yet without pretension. Taking as its subject the natural world and the arbitrary nature of things, this collection includes concrete poems, rhymed lyrics... read more

A landmark anthology celebrating a new generation of Australian poets. The year 1968 marked a turning point in Australian poetry, when a dynamic wave of new poets sought to revitalise a 'moribund poetic culture'. At the helm of that generation was John Tranter, who argued that there would be cycles or generations of poets with peak moments where new poets would emerge to revitalise the culture. Forty years later, with a spate of superb debut collections, Australian poetry has never looked so energetic and vital. From the imaginativ... read more

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Poetry, we are often told these days, is obsolete. Yet there are two situations in particular that awaken the dormant yearning for 'memorable speech', as one popular definition of poetry describes it. One is a wedding and the other is a funeral. This collection, edited by acclaimed poet Jamie Grant, provides the words to mark these occasions in an Australian context. Ranging from the early nineteenth century to the present day, this moving anthology roams the dark, ecstatic, funny, mournful moments we experience during love and los... read more

Fire Diary is the first book of poems by Mark Tredinnick, author of The Blue Plateau and The Little Red Writing Book. Fire Diary amounts to a spiritual geography of the poet, an everyday ecology of the "beautiful struggle, the ordinary trouble" he finds himself - we all find ourselves - in.

A collection of poems that is by turns a voice and a chorus: a hyper-vivid array of dramatic monologues, allegories, parables and tall tales. It creates world after world, peculiar yet always particular, where the only certainty is the unexpected.

A good poem is one that the world can't forget or is delighted to rediscover. This landmark anthology of Australian poetry, edited by two of Australia's foremost poets, Geoffrey Lehmann and Robert Gray, contains such poems. It is the first of its kind for Australia and promises to become a classic. Included here are Australia's major poets, and lesser-known but equally affecting ones, and all manifestations of Australian poetry since 1788, from concrete poems to prose poems, from the cerebral to the naive, from the humorous to the ... read more

With Armour, the great Australian poet John Kinsella has written his most spiritual work to date and his most politically engaged. The world in which these poems unfold is strangely poised between the material and the immaterial, and everything which enters it kestrel and fox, moth and almond does so illuminated by its own vivid presence: the impression is less a poet honouring his subjects than uncannily inhabiting them. Elsewhere we find a poetry of lyric protest, as Kinsella scrutinizes the equivocal place of the human within th... read more

One of the major figures of English Romanticism, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) created works of remarkable diversity and imaginative genius. The period of his creative friendship with William Wordsworth inspired some of Coleridge's best-known poems, from the nightmarish vision of the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and the opium-inspired "Kubla Khan" to the sombre passion of "Dejection: An Ode" and the medieval ballad "Christabel". His meditative 'conversation' poems, such as "Frost at Midnight" and "This Lime-Tree Bower Mr Pri... read more

Robert Gray is possibly Australia's finest living poet of the physical world, and this collection represents all the work from his books, including his most recent - "Lineations". Robert Gray is on the NSW HSC syllabus.

This is an exquisite collection of physical, sensual poems which confirms Davies reputation as one of Australia's foremost poets.

The culminating achievement of Eliot's poetic career. The four parts: "Burnt Norton","East Coker", "The Dry Salvages" and "Little Gidding" present a rigorous meditation upon those spiritual, philosophical and personal themes that preoccupied the author.

An up-to-the-minute selection by one of Australia's most distinguished poets. Malouf's best poems, with their grace and intelligence, remain among the finest examples of the Australian lyric. An essential compendium for all lovers of literature.

Explores issues of sublimity and beauty, contemplates the aesthetic and the transcendent, examines nature and the artificial. John Kinsella is one of Australia's most internationally respected poets.

This is a superb introduction to poetry from the nineteenth century to the present. With insight and insider knowledge, poet Geoff Page emphasises the contribution made by the notable generation of Australian poets who emerged during and just after World War II. It includes several contemporary poems which are likely to become classics in the near future. Each poem is followed by a short, lively essay discussing its merits and suggesting why it might be considered a classic.

Shakespeare's sonnets are lyrical, haunting, beautiful and often breath-taking, representing one of the finest bodies of poetry ever penned. They demonstrate the writer's skill in capturing the full range of human emotions within a carefully prescribed form and creating something unique in every one.

In its seventh year, Alan Wearne brings to this collection his endless inquisitiveness and his mastery of the infinite complexity of Australian social life. His selection of 40 poems from Australia's print and online journals shows us of the many radically different ways that poetry can portray lives. With poems from both well-known and up-and-coming Australian poets, including Robert Adamson, Rosemary Dobson, L.K. Holt, John Kinsella, Les Murray, Geoff Page, Peter Porter, Jaya Savige, Peter Skrzynecki and Thomas Shapcott, Wearne h... read more

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In this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their prefaces, the editors offer insights into their own work as well as providing an accessible and passionate introduction to the most important poets in our literature. She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that's best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes: Thus mellowed to that tender light Which heaven to gaud... read more

Philip Larkin met Monica Jones at University College Leicester in autumn 1946, when they were both twenty-four; he was the newly-appointed assistant librarian and she was an English lecturer. In 1950 Larkin moved to Belfast, and thence to Hull, while Monica remained in Leicester, becoming by turns his correspondent, lover and closest confidante, in a relationship which lasted over forty years until the poet's death in 1985. This remarkable unpublished correspondence only came to light after Monica Jones' death in 2001, and consists... read more