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'This important memoir about growing up brings tears, laughter and goosebumps - sometimes all at the same time. It is utterly compelling. Johanson is a natural storyteller. With unique turns of phrase and a delicious sense of humour, his human generosity and wisdom guide the reader through a most unusual set of life circumstances. Intelligent, sensitive, erudite, fascinating, confronting and subtly hilarious! A pleasure to read.' - Liz Vercoe, creative writer and artist'This is an extraordinary story of courage and resilience. Johanson creates a deeply moving account of a remarkable capacity to overcome an upbringing encased in a rigidly restrictive cult and punitive family interactions. His saga is set in Melbourne suburbia in the 1950s-1960s, full of local adventures. The author is a man I know now as a generous, warm, kind and humorous professor. How he became that man is a story that will enrich every reader's life.' - Dr Sam Ginsberg OAM

'Absorbing, empathetic and cerebral all at once. Using ordinary language and often extraordinary turns of phrase, Williams manages to peel back the complex layers of our everyday lives with remarkable grace and clarity.' - Judy Johnson'Jane Williams has the rare ability to make our ordinary days feel not just vividly real, but also cared for, and precious. In scenes from her own life and the sympathetically observed lives of others, there is a lovely coexistence of pragmatism and a belief in the need for comfort. From falling in love "in slow motion" with a blue tongue lizard to seeing in the mirror the face of her mother's daughter greeting her kindly - "ne more fold in the soul's origami", undercurrents is constantly surprising, enriching and memorable.' - Jean Kent

A Gradual Grace is Christina's third memoir. In the first, This Place You Know, she tells the story of her childhood on an outback sheep station, told in her mother's voice and her own voice and published by Ginninderra Press in 2019. The second, A Practice of Loss, tells the story of the breakdown of her marriage and the abduction of her three young daughters by their father. A Gradual Grace completes the trilogy.

Tess has lived in many cities until the hills and the sea called...this is where you belong. Her poems reflect the people she has met, the places she has lived in and the memories of her wanderings. These poems are rich in their colour and movement capturing moments in a mix of form and knowledge. Published in many national and various international anthologies, her individual collections include Woman Behind Glass and Kite Lady.

'The deepest pools of reflection come from loss and grief. Andrew Drake is among the sweetest, gentlest and most patient of human beings, but his life has been fraught by sorrows and recriminations. These he turns into a lifeline of loveliness, love letters to the past. That pain is a poet's best friend seems unfair. And yet it is in the sharing of these emotions that the poet enriches, for he is not alone and his sentiments tap into our sentiments and we understand that sensibilities are also suffering.' - Samela Harris, Member of the Journalism Hall of Fame

The bulk of this collection is devoted to the achievements of two pioneers, Joshua Slocum and Percy Fawcett. Captain Slocum was the first person to sail around the world alone - between 1892 and 1895 in a converted oyster fishing boat, on his return chronicling his experiences in the book Sailing Alone Around the World. Colonel Fawcett was an Amazonian explorer, with an extensive knowledge of Indian languages, who believed that an as-yet undiscovered civilisation was to be found somewhere in the Brazilian rainforest. He, with two companions, disappeared in the jungle, and no trace of them has ever been found. Also, by an ironic twist of fate, fourteen years after his famous voyage Slocum disappeared in the Atlantic, and again no traces have been found - two mysteries surrounding two great explorers.

It's 1974. Joanna's and Peter's dream is to turn a remote, neglected property on the wild west coast of Tasmania into a thriving cattle enterprise. Having grown up as a sheltered only child, Joanna had leaped out of the nest at twenty seeking adventure. While Papua New Guinea, South America and Europe offered easy adventure, she gets more than she bargained for on Top Farm. Three hours' drive from the nearest town at the end of a sandy, rocky track, Top Farm offers her tough, gritty adventure, while living in a cottage with no plumbing, no telephone and no neighbours. Joanna throws herself into everything. She explores the paddocks, rainforest and nearby beach; is enchanted by the wildlife; falls in love with cows; and becomes hooked on gardening when her pea seeds burst out of the moist soil. However, with cattle prices falling, weather gods that decree more rain than sun, and their savings shrinking, Joanna and Peter face an uncertain future. Will they overcome their problems or will they be forced to drive away forever from the farm at the end of the track?

'No Salami Fairy Bread is an invitation to open each page of a new life, full of uncertainty and tenacity due to her family's decision to leave Argentina. Copello writes from her eyes and heart as an immigrant woman who came to live in Australia, "Free land for those who are willing to work it'. Reading her poems, the strong voice of a young woman appears, carrying suitcases (maletas) full of dreams, of women's struggles for liberation, of lovers, of family, of education. "Let's take a photo, for posterity", said the husband. "She looks beyond the camera, beyond the husband, / Beyond the present to a time / when dreams come true."' - Juan Garrido Salgado, poet'No Salami Fairy Bread is a moving series of poems that chart Beatriz Copello's migration from Argentina to Australia and subsequent coming of age as a young wife, mother and modern woman. The book is a powerful story of loss and discovery, with a strong narrative arc that mingles with rich nostalgia. The book covers, in a way that only verse can, the complex mixture of fear and excitement, disappointment, aspiration, perseverance, resignation, awakening and, above all, transformation in the Sydney of the seventies. Beatriz Copello draws together her skills as a psychologist and poet, and the weight of her lived experience, to tell a story that is equal parts humour, pain and joy which is both poignant and powerful.' - Magdalena Ball, Compulsive Reader'I am hooked! There are so many "hooks" for me in Beatriz Copello's work that I truly do not know where to begin. I thought I was reading a book of poems. And it is. But then I found myself in the middle of a novel, a page-turner which I just couldn't put down! For in No Salami Fairy Bread, the poet spins a spellbinding yarn. She does it in a style which is direct, oscillating between the refreshingly humorous and ironic, and the heart-rending - often in the same poem. The intensity can be unsettling at times. But even in such situations, the poet does not let you fall, rather beautifully balancing you by her utmost integrity, hued by pinches of humour - even in dark situations. I dare you pick this volume up and put it down before its last reflective poem.' - Daniel Lonita, poet

Gwen Bitti born with a facial caul, in Calcutta, India, migrates to Australia with her family when she is sixteen. She returns to her birth land for a visit some years later. On her arrival she is jolted into a new perspective and with fresh insight, sets off on a quest. The motif of her enigmatic caul is woven throughout her memoir as she draws together the threads of stories of her family and childhood to discover the truth.'In the author's sharp observations and evocative authentic recreation of people and places immerses the reader in the story and gives an added dimension to this page-turner. Moments of violence, insurgency, fear, lies, secrecy and escape are palpable alongside the comfortable lifestyle, and the privilege and status of this Anglo-Indian family.' - Dr Sharon Rundle, writer and editor'From the opening paragraph of this memoir, I was hooked.' - Emerita Professor Di Yerbury, AO. Chair, International Judging Panel, Commonwealth Writers' Prize 1989 and 1990 'Poignant and beautifully articulated - the struggle within the human soul as it searches for that most important of things - identity.' - Nick Bleszynski, author/screenwriter, and director'Gwen...bringing India vividly alive for the reader.' - Emerita Professor Elizabeth Webby

This book describes highlights, and the occasional lowlight, of Michael Newman's life. It will make you laugh, shudder and reflect. Newman takes you to far-flung places - Jamaica, America, South Africa, France and England - with a witty mind and a cross-cultural vision of the world. This is a personal memoir delighting in the inconsistencies of life. Among the highlights, he talks his way out of a mugging in Kingston, Jamaica, tells the world's longest joke in Covent Garden, joins a picket line of a clothing workers' strike in Johannesburg, and finds himself in Paris during the riots that swept across France in May 1968. Among the lowlights, he flies a car in north Pakistan and comes a social cropper in Dallas.

John Egan is a Sydney poet who also lives on the south coast of NSW. He was a high-school teacher of English for twenty-two years, Second Master of Bankstown Grammar School for nine years and later taught English as a foreign language and university preparation courses at the University of NSW, Wollongong University College and Newcastle University. For some years he also taught English and business communication at JDW Business College. His first chapbook was published by the Melbourne Poets Union and Ginninderra Press have published five collections, a verse novel, six collaborations with other poets and a number of chapbooks. He considers himself a poet of memory and the sea, but also writes of the natural world, the urban environment, social issues and Australian history.

'It was the prevailing attitude in the 1960s that women had no history. There were no women's studies, nothing.' - Judy Chicago, creator of the iconic art installation The Dinner Party, 2017'The Dinner Party by the talented poet Colleen Keating brings to light, through beautiful lyrical poetry, what for centuries has been ignored: the power and strength of women. Very little has been made known about the lives of influential women of the past, as women's lived experience has been suppressed, even erased from history. In this collection, the poet resuscitates the experience of women from prehistory to women's twentieth-century revolution. Her poetry traces the lives of women who demonstrated their influence, in every field including philosophy, medicine, writing, art, astronomy, suffragists and justice warriors who fought for recognition. Women who gave their lives, suffered, broke barriers, knocked down walls, smashed glass ceilings, pried open doors, who defied patriarchy in some way for all of us. Still today as women are written into history, the struggle for our reckoning towards equality and respect continues. A must-read book that honours women; women who would not be silent.' - Dr Beatriz Copello'With impeccable research and deep empathy, Colleen Keating continues her powerful poetic contribution to feminist literature with the celebration of thirty-nine of the more than a thousand women forgotten, marginalised or written out of Western history. A remarkable and beautifully imagined work.' - Pip Griffin

These poems are about time and memory. Many of them focus on the particular moments of experience that our memories are able to capture and preserve, a process of considerable mystery. In this, his first full-length collection, Graham Wood considers some of the mysteries involved in time and memory. He does this obliquely, in a glancing way, rather than directly. Many of the poems are like snapshots or small movies, often suffused with a quirky humour. Others are more serious in tone and reach, but always retain a lightness of touch.

'Here you have fundamental poetry about water, earth, air and even fire. Jeannie Lawson has a keen eye for nature in all its guises. She has an admirable sense of detail and a rare sense of the poignant. Her time spent underwater is evident in many of these poems. In fact, you can be under the ocean cavorting with cetaceans without getting wet. A very enjoyable collection.' - John Blackhawk'Jeannie writes with passion and empathy - her colourful coastal-lived experiences, deep knowledge and thoughtful musings shared in her writings. Pleasurable poetry awaits every reader.' - Jennifer Garner'Jeannie's poems speak of fragility, strength, wonder, solitude, courage and the healing power of the natural world. The poems focus to a large extent on the environment both above and below water. Jeannie takes readers on journeys through wondrous places with deeply personal perspectives and impressions.' - John Nankivell'I respond most strongly to the visual images in these poems about the sea and the land we live in. It is the economical use of words that paint such a vivid picture which intrigues and enthrals me. I find that, after reading these poems, I feel calmer, more part of the nature described and the words create magic, transport me to another place.' - Val Norris'When one reads Jeannie's words ,you may travel their path where the road is clear and the end sure. Alternatively, you may end up in a labyrinth of emotions, perplexed, and the path is not so sure. This is life, laid out in every page in all its beauty, from the micro to the macro, sometimes stripped bare for you to observe its essence. Jeannie's unique ability is to take you to her world, through her eyes so that you may experience life's complexities, nature in all its wondrous form, interconnected, never apart, through a porthole, lens, window or frame. I found these poems provide not only an insight into Jeannie's world but a new window into our own world on how we view nature. Through prose we can question - is that how I feel or see this curiosity? These poems have brought nature in all its glory to your world for you to reflect, ask and ultimately love. If one can love nature half as much as Jeannie does, then there's hope for the planet. I feel honoured to have shared part of her world and to look at my own relationship to nature.' - Paul Louis Rooms, Burramattagal First Nations survivor, Dahrug.

The Bungalow began in 1914, as a tin shed in the small colonial outpost of Alice Springs. It was built initially to house Topsy Smith, of Arabana descent, and her seven children after their Welsh-born father, Bill Smith, had died. Over the years that followed, many more children with Aboriginal mothers and (largely absent) white fathers were brought to live at the Bungalow until, by 1929, when it was relocated out of town, about sixty children were living and growing up there. They were cared for primarily by Topsy Smith as well as the town's first schoolteacher, Ida Standley. The other central adult figure of this story is Sergeant Stott who oversaw the establishment and operation of the home. Drawing on archival documents, oral histories and interviews with living descendants, this story gives voice to women, children, and First Nations people. Researched history is interspersed with passages of creative non-fiction that create a palpable sense of time and place and bring the story to life. The complexity and nuance of engagement between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians is also explored; relationships that have for so long been downplayed in works of Australian history. As well as presenting the fascinating and pivotal story of the Bungalow in Alice Springs from 1914 to 1929, this work offers a model for new ways of creative, postcolonial storytelling about Australia, her history and her present, and the inextricable links between the two.

'Virginia Lowe's poems evoke life experiences such as parenting, marriage, and growing up and meditate on them in moving and unexpected ways. This latest collection displays her hallmark wry humour and tenderness, linking intense personal moments to wider human concerns. And her love of language and reading shines throughout her poetry.' - Christopher Ringrose'A poem a year, traversing birth to illness, to the consideration of death, wrapped in a shifting chronology of overwhelming joy and heart, Lowe melds time and the events of childhood, adolescence, adulthood, love, rights, education, to great-grandparenting, always keenly observed with an eye to how the past informs the future, parting the telling ways of what it is to be human, in a world and life of the landscape of experience.' - James Walton'Virginia observes many small articles and actions of family life, always moving to the relationship they signify. This has been called "domestic poetry" - a term once used in disparagement of poets who did not foreground great men of war and politics, or the themes of time-honoured mythology. To my mind, domesticity is even more worthy of close observation and exact tracing of meanings: After all, it is a large percentage of everyone's life.' - Judith Rodriguez

'Bill Wootton's poems are kites flown in the sky of our daily lives - hold on to them, go with them.' - Ross Gillett'Bill Wootton is an empathetic poet with a clear and focused voice. His finely detailed and artfully compressed narrative poems are like mini-novels or movies. His work is accessible yet deep, infused with self-effacing humour which makes it a delight to read.' - Myron Lysenko'Bill Wootton's nimble poems swing through the daily and the resonances of memory with keen observation and genuine warmth. These poems show how clarity and a playful touch are often hard-won yet richly satisfying.' - Jill Jones

My love for the water of the sea, of river, bay and ocean, from childhood to now, its call is strong and I yearn to be close to the flow of tides. In Aquamarine, include poems on the tragedy of refugees who came to us by boat seeking refuge. There are poems about convicts and slaves, floods and climate change. It is a collection drawing on my wonder at the mystery of the deep, of myth and folklore and how, from our first cluster of cells, the ocean has shaped the human race. It is also a collection about my relationship with the shoreline, the healing, both physical and spiritual that water offers us.

Cancer is a disease with a persona of mystery, often referred to through the use of negative metaphors such as alien, evil, and foreign, while its medical treatment and recovery phases are described with warfare metaphors, and sadly when death is the end result, one is said to have lost their battle with cancer. However, Cameron in this debut collection, draws the reader into the expansive territory of cancer poetry, where attempts are made to construct meaning far beyond the battlefield. The emotional roller coaster of cancer, the messy, at times humorous, at times ugly, aspects of cancer, its treatment, and its people are explored in this wide-ranging collection of poems that weave connections between nature and humanity into the clinical settings and finds quiet hope amidst the fear and suffering. Cameron speaks from her experience as cancer patient, but also from decades working as a health professional. She writes with a profound insight into the complexities of living and dying with serious illness, and of the grieving for those who are left behind. 'Heather Cameron's striking poems are alive to the true mess and unruliness of "the uncontrollable world". In this very assured debut collection there are reckonings and there are epiphanies but there remains an appealing openness to the unresolved, to ambivalence and an acknowledgment of ever-present dereliction. It is in no way easy to write about cancer with such a uniformly unsentimental and clear-eyed vision as this poet achieves here.' - Lucy Dougan

In the 1980s there was a kind of magic to the mixtape. They could be anything its creator wanted. The mixtape was like a letter, but it was also a personal soundtrack. You wanted it to say something about you - to express in some abstract way how you felt about the world, life, hopes, dreams and love. This book is like a mixtape because it is a mixture of things, all of them touching in one way or another on life in the 1980s and music. Through a series of funny, heart-warming and incisive memoir pieces, stories and essays, the 1980s are brought back to life - the last decade before personal computers, the internet and mobile phones came along and changed everything. So hit rewind and then press play...

The Bucket List is an introspective expedition into growing up in the Sunshine State of Queensland, Australia. Deborah Tanzer's recollections are offered through verse, every word delicately chosen to capture the spirit of loved ones, seasons, landscape and identities. Complementing the artistic flow of the author are compelling and enticing artworks by her father. The artworks are part of a private and commissioned collection by Barry Tanzer. There are stories attached to each work that express places, the political, family and a lifetime of experiences. The author's mother, Carol Tanzer, also inspired her to paint as a child. A childhood of watching the artistic sides of both parents has left the author with visual art skills and a fondness for writing.

"One should never underestimate poetry's capacity to convey tender­ness. Brink's reflections on the life that was - home, husband, family, convention - are both touching and true. Charting the struggle to renew the self, the poems become more playful and confident with an inventiveness of form and exuberance of wordplay." - Deb Westbury "Written from the intersections of science and religion, Charlotte Clutterbuck's Brink is a subtle, even delicate, narrative. In expertly constructed poems, we are told how a mature woman with grown children and a husband ('who was sensible when (she) wasn't') decides to 'step off the edge of (her) life', leaving her marriage to live with the woman she has come to love. Despite their emotional intensity, the poems in Brink are not without a wry humour. Nor do they shirk the consequences of the narrator's move ('no friends ring me / no mail comes / my children speak / stiffly on the phone'). Beyond this personal story, however, Brink is also concerned with cultural contrasts (Aboriginal and Japanese, in particular) and, most often, with the metaphysical gap between 'those who think they know everything' and 'those who think they know there is nothing'. For all her familiarity with cosmology and science, Clutterbuck, in 'Why I still go to church', continues to feel 'a charged stillness' there despite her rejection of conventional pieties. At every step, Brink asks challenging questions and eschews simple answers." - Geoff Page

The poems in Down the Rabbit Hole, as the title suggests, take the reader on a spiralling journey through personal, social and global upheaval. Kate Maxwell's second collection explores the collective mood of uncertainty around the onset and disruption of the global pandemic years. Her poems focus on concepts of disturbance, loss and ultimately acceptance - on the world stage, in the home or in the heart. Maxwell's prose moves fluidly through powerful commentary, lyrical imagery and a touch of wry humour. A familiar place to many, Down the Rabbit Hole, leads us to doors, asks us to make choices and - just like Alice - wonder. 'Like Alice and her acquaintances, Kate Maxwell's personae in Down the Rabbit Hole face mind-bending choices and decisions. For many of them, illusion and moral inertia prevent any meaningful outcome, limiting them to a domain of hypocrisy, humbug and absurdity. Maxwell is a poet of social conscience, as she widens her horizons to expose the evils of first-world centrism and apathy. She is also a poet of quirkiness and irony, and her satirical sequence of poems on writing and linguistic creativity cannot fail to delight. Readers who've enjoyed her previous collection, Never Good at Maths, will look forward to delving into Maxwell's Carrollian world.' - Margaret Bradstock'In her second poetry collection, Maxwell leads us down a rich and very contemporary urban rabbit hole where the strains of our ecologically precarious, science-saturated age rub shoulders with motherly love, peak hour traffic and dripping taps. Part social commentary, part personal exploration, the poems carry Maxwell's trademark astute eye and sardonic humour, adroitly leavening what might otherwise be at times a dark world view. An assured and fluid style liberally sprinkled with artful juxtapositions (such as "Vivaldi, vodka, and mother's crystal" or "ingrained with gravel and embarrassment") ensure that this is a captivating and highly stimulating read.' - Denise O'Hagan

'Steve is a fine exponent of lyrical poetry - the exacting nature and resonant quality of his verse has been there from the start, and he has been an influential figure in Australian poetry.' - Anthony Lawrence'Even in the world of the very ordinary, Evans finds extraordinary poetry.' - Peter Goldsworthy'The stunning "Bent Wolf" sequence moves between observer and observed with poems of delight and revelation in assured, original voices that range from wry to cunning to gritty.' - David Adès'Steve Evans has been a substantial figure in Australian poetry for several decades.' - Geoff Page'Steve Evans takes the tiny, the taken-for-granted, the cats and dogs, birds and bees, snails and ants that accompany us through our "very big and important" human lives and casts them on a higher plane than we can ever hope to land upon.' - Louise Nicholas

'Diana Pearce's poetry collection provides a demonstration of the wisdom in delaying publication until the poems have matured. She grew up in the country, which remains a focus of much of her poetry. It is, however, far removed from bush verse. The language is accessible, but her control of images and metaphors lifts the work to a higher plane. Diana shows, not tells. We see familiar subject matter with fresh vision. One example appears in "Desiccation", set at a school reunion during drought: "We gathered/ a greyness of septuagenarians, / sharing faintly verdant / recollections of school life / decades past'. The collection invites us into a world that would be familiar to many readers, but one that we see in a new way." - Norm Neill'This is an exciting late debut, a memorable collection of poems that has waited a lifetime of experience to be committed to written form. The casual everyday quality of the diction adds to its depth and authentic lived-in texture, and transforms the poet's landscape from ordinary to extraordinary. It deals with love, loss, and sometimes aloneness, in an immediate and refreshing way. The voice is engaging, warm and open, communicative and clear. Here is a poet who encourages the reader to "move through corridors of memories" and offers hope, especially for those in the winter of their years, to "find the wonder / in the still-to-come" as put forward in "The Sixth Age".' - Cassandra J. O'Loughlin

'There is a gentle thread running through this book of short poems which takes us homeward bound on a journey of self-reflection with the poet. I've come to know Stella through her cherita poems, many of which I've published in the cherita. She is a prolific writer of the storytelling genre I created in 1997, with many stories to share, and she draws us into her world of what home means to her. Now a fully fledged storyteller who lives in Australia, she invites us in to her other home, the one she left behind in Yogyakarta, whose sights, sounds and scents meander into poetry's ink and linger...' - ai li, creator of cherita, editor and publisher of the cherita

David Bunn's second book of poems spans a decade of published and unpublished writing. The poems include speech about politics, society and settler colonialism but also consider painting, the uses of travel, gravity waves, earthquakes, love, landscape, sculling, age, wine, war, geology, translation, vision, the Big Bang, the succession of the generations, death and the squaring of things with your father. They do this in forms which respond to writers such as Dante and Auden, and to musicians like Keith Jarrett and Vivaldi. They include a set of verse letters written during the early pandemic on writing, art and plague. The drive is to find what lies behind first appearances, myth, commonplace, deceptive and insulating formulae, and stunted rhetoric. They aspire to be as healthful as Wordsworth or as radically beautiful as Camille Pissarro, but as Dr Johnson said, explaining why he was a failed philosopher, cheerfulness always keeps on breaking in.

'David Kelly is keenly attentive to the still-life moments we can so easily all walk past. His poetry is measured and thoughtful, moving fluidly along the journey of interactions with the handyman, before stretching through to observations of fauna and space and haiku. But just when you think you know where he is leading, he stuns with a brilliant poem like "Seven". From tumbled cats to quicksand, this collection is quietly elegant and profound.' - Robyn Black, poet, memoirist and short story writer'the handyman and other poems reads like a concerto grosso to me; a concerto grosso of six very distinct movements each with their own pace of language and rhythm fitting for their subject(s) all in a sober language stripped of unnecessary ornamentation that lets you in, that invites you in. A nakedness of language that is commendable. I'm there watching/overhearing the dialogue - verbal and non-verbal - with the handyman. I'm at sporting events trying to grasp what's going on, a silent observer of dinners for two and pondering about space and Australian wildlife and finding an echo of Bash¿'s frog's hidden jump. In short: I really like this collection.' - Johannes S. H. Bjerg, Danish poet, artist and editor'When one takes the time to truly read and absorb all of the deeply atmospheric nuances of David's poetry, it very soon becomes quite galahingly obvious that this man is living in a world of allusion. Poignant, evocative Aha! moment allusion. Mr Kelly's latest menagerie of hand-hewn, free-range, home-grown Australian verse is steeped in a billy tea to transport our souls both to the stars and safely back to earth, inexplicably surviving the deadly impenetrable radiation of the Van Allen Belt of toxic incredulity. Buy now, enjoy the rush.' - Peter McQuade, Pterodactyl Man, musician and comic artist

'This is a vast collection of meaty poetry, and it traverses diverse topics with irreverent wordplay and dirty-hearted love. To be truthful and self-expressive under the vicious hail of mental illness is not easy. There are so many repeatable quips, but I quote here lines about Andy, who was my always partner: "It spoke at him constantly / Rattling off insults and taunts / Not a minute went by / Without a cruel dig or a dull, perilous whisper / Always at the expense / Of his frail sense / That what was deep inside of him / Was outside of him as well." Doesn't that speak to all of us?' - Sally Harbison, poet, writer, academic'Kirwan creates another world, full of storytelling, imagery, symbolism and pathos all in good humour. Sort of quirky and surreal at times. This remarkable collection is a mark of respect to our mutual friend Andrew Coote. His legacy brings the best out in Dominic. The master craftsman at work.' - Peter Gate, poet, author of Strange Car in My Street'Dominic creates a perspective that compels the reader to want to look at themselves and reality through his eyes. Beautifully eccentric and at times brutal, his work explores identity through the lenses of loneliness, love and loss. A journey that points out the tropes of human existence with an irreverent charm. The Mouth in the Sky will make you smirk, pluck your own heartstrings and chuckle while drinking pickled honesty. Poetry at its finest, this book begs to be read more than once.' - Leonie Hagstrom, poet