Monstrous shortlisting
September 25, 2020
Very happy that Monstrous has been shortlisted for the Society of Women Writers NSW Book Awards, in the Poetry Category. Here is the full shortlist:
POETRY – JUDGED BY MARGARET BRADSTOCK
P.S. Cottier Monstrous
Tricia Dearborn Autobiochemistry
Pip Griffin Margaret Caro
Colleen Keating Desert Patterns
Colleen Keating Hildegard of Bingen
The gnome is murderously happy…
Book Review: Two Holocaust stories
August 11, 2020
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6862223/harrowing-and-inspiring-stories/
In recent months I have been reviewing quite a few books for The Canberra Times. The most recent review, published on 8-8-2020, is of two remarkable books recounting the lives of Holocaust survivors, and I thought I’d post a link to it here. The books reviewed are Eddie Jaku’s The Happiest Man on Earth and When Time Stopped: A Memoir of My Father’s War and What Remains by Ariana Neumann.
Reviewing is a privilege when it involves reading books such as these; the only problem is trying to do the books justice in the space available.
Photo by Flora Westbrook on Pexels.com
Zoom launch of Monstrous
August 5, 2020
Last Sunday was the Zoom launch of Monstrous, my new collection of horror poems. Thank you to the publisher, David Reiter for organising the launch, and to Tim Jones for the launch speech. Also thanks to those who attended, and those who helped with the book, especially Kaaron Warren for the Introduction. If you would like to have a look, the launch is now up on YouTube.
The book is available as a paperback or e-book at many on-line retailers, from the publisher, or, for those in Canberra, direct from me, or at Book Lore in Lyneham.
Utterly arrival
July 2, 2020
Very happy to see my book Utterly in the flesh, straight from Ginninderra Press. Utterly has many poems about the environment and climate change, as well as more personal concerns. It can be ordered here (dispatching from the 13th July). Or through Amazon, etc.
My second book during the virus lockdown, although things are gradually getting back to normal in Canberra. I will be holding a physical launch for Utterly later in the year, probably alongside Monstrous (see last post). It’s hard to plan anything at the moment, although we are having a much easier time here in Canberra than parts of Melbourne (not to mention various other countries).
Regardless of the launch situation, it’s a wonderful thing to hold one’s own book!
Monstrous arrival
June 4, 2020
My new poetry collection just arrived from the publishers, Interactive Press. As the title would suggest, it deals with some horrible creatures, from a re-working of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, to killer garden gnomes, to sharks that eat suns, to aliens on a nineteenth-century lunar voyage. There’s also the dubious future of the game of cricket. There’s some disturbing stuff, and some humour too.
You can read more about the book here. And it can be ordered here. The print version is postage free to Australia and New Zealand, for a limited time.
Thank you to Kaaron Warren for the Introduction, and to Andrew Galan for providing a blurb. Also to Zoe Hartland for the suitably freaky gnome, and Geoffrey Dunn for the author photo.
I will be launching it sometime in Canberra (and possibly elsewhere), when gatherings become a little more feasible, and I hear that an on-line event for all IP books published this month will be held. David Reiter, the publisher, is organising that.
Of course I wish that the May launch could have occurred, but the book has won through, in all its manic strangeness. I can’t wait to read some of the poems aloud to an actual gathering!
