Beowulf: A New Translation by Maria Dahvana Headley

$27.99 AUD

Category: Translated Fiction

"The author of the crazy-cool Beowulf-inspired novel The Mere Wife tackles the Old English epic poem with a fierce new feminist translation that radically recontextualizes the tale." - Barbara VanDenburgh, USA TodayNearly twenty years after Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf —and fifty years after t he translation that continues to torment high-school students around the world— there is a radical new verse translation of the epic poem by Maria Dahvana Headley, which brings to light elements that have never before been translated into English, recontextualizing the binary narrative of monsters and heroes into a tale in which the two categories often entwine, justice is rarely served, and dragons live among us. A man seeks to prove himself as a hero. A monster seeks silence in his territory. A warrior seeks to avenge her murdered son. A dragon ends it all. The familiar elements of the epic poem are seen with a novelist’s eye toward gender, genre, and history—Beowulf has always been a tale of entitlement and encroachment, powerful men seeking to become more powerful, and one woman seeking justice for her child, but this version brings new context to an old story. While crafting her contemporary adaptation of Beowulf, Headley unearthed significant shifts lost over centuries of translation. ...Show more

Unusual Work by Collective Effort

$10.00 AUD

Category: Poetry

Dropbear by Evelyn Araluen

$24.99 AUD

Category: Poetry

I told you this was a thirst so great it could carve rivers. This fierce debut from award-winning writer Evelyn Araluen confronts the tropes and iconography of an unreconciled nation with biting satire and lyrical fury. Dropbear interrogates the complexities of colonial and personal history with an alte rnately playful, tender and mournful intertextual voice, deftly navigating the responsibilities that gather from sovereign country, the spectres of memory and the debris of settler-coloniality. This innovative mix of poetry and essay offers an eloquent witness to the entangled present, an uncompromising provocation of history, and an embattled but redemptive hope for a decolonial future. ...Show more

Throat by Ellen van Neerven

$24.99 AUD

Category: Poetry

not in Aus, matebad things don't happen here our beaches are open they are not places where bloodied mattresses burn 'Throat' is the explosive second poetry collection from award-winning Mununjali Yugambeh writer Ellen van Neerven. Exploring love, language and land, van Neerven flexes their distinctive muscles and shines a light on Australia's unreconciled past and precarious present with humour and heart. Van Neerven is unsparing in the interrogation of colonial impulse, and fiercely loyal to telling the stories that make us who we are. ...Show more

To My Country by Ben Lawson; Bruce Whatley (Illustrator)

$29.99 AUD

Category: Poetry

On January 10, Ben touched the hearts of Australians with the reading of his poem To My Country in response to the Australian bushfires. This gorgeous 4 colour book combines Ben's heartfelt words with stunning illustrations by Bruce Whatley.  

Homeland Calling - Words from a New Generation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voices by Desert Pea Media; Ellen van Neerven (Editor)

$24.99 AUD

Category: Poetry

With lyrics rich in rhyme, Homeland Calling is a hip-hop poetry collection that channels culture and challenges stereotypes. The words have all been written by First Nations youth from remote and regional communities around Australia, edited by award-winning author and poet Ellen van Neerven, and brough t to you by Desert Pea Media. These verses are the result of young artists exploring their place in the world and expressing the future they want to live in. Organised into four sections, 'Country is my heartbeat', 'History is in my bloodline', 'Flame in the struggle' and 'Pride in my people', the words of these deadly, young poets offer wider Australia a rare insight into their thoughts, hopes and dreams. At the back of the book, you'll find a notes section written by Ellen that addresses many of the basic misconceptions regarding First Nations histories and peoples. There's also a glossary of words used in the poems that demonstrate the diversity of languages spoken across this country. ...Show more

Admit the Joyous Passion of Revolt by Elena Gomez

$25.00 AUD

Category: Poetry

Admit the Joyous Passion of Revolt is a Marxist-feminist epic poem — wait, no, it's historical — actually it's poems of the worker's body. It is none and all of these things. It is absurd or perhaps entirely sincere. Gomez's second book brings together a series of poems on the life of Bolshevik feminist Alexandra Kollontai. It examines love and desire under capitalism, and imagines how these will look in a post-capitalist world. This is poetry for girls, poetry for communism; it's poetry for the past and for the impossible future. ...Show more

Lost Arabs by Omar Sakr

$24.95 AUD

Category: Poetry

Visceral and energetic, Omar Sakr’s poetry confronts notions of identity and belonging head-on. Braiding together sexuality and divinity, conflict and redemption, The Lost Arabs is a seething, urgent collection from a distinctive new voice. ‘The tyranny that we can inflict on each other, the harms of fa mily and history, the need for solace and belonging find perfect pitch in line after line of this magnificent collection. There’s an urgent need for this book, it should be on every shelf.’ – Judith Beveridge ‘The Lost Arabs is the poetic posture of a man in all his forms standing by the eternal river, who has placed both feet in the sand, and who refuses to sink.’– Ali Cobby Eckermann ‘The new and powerful voice, public, performative, but also vulnerably intimate, of one of our “children of elsewhere”.’ – David Malouf ...Show more

The Weave by John Kinsella; Thurston Moore

$19.99 AUD

Category: Poetry

'The Weave is the second book collaboration between Thurston Moore and John Kinsella – 'dubbed a work in progress by the two poets, the book guides readers through a world in decay, crafting an invigo rating language of spontaneity and survival out of the destruction. Moore and Kinsella aren't just obse rving – they implicate us all in the harms of global capitalism and environmental disaster, charting a back and forth between the individual and the crowd.' — Rosie Long Decter'These poems start in Dolphy's key + end with a quarryman's dream. In between secrets are stored. See how many you can find.' — Clark Coolidge ...Show more

Anecdotal Evidence by Gayelene Carbis

$24.99 AUD

Category: Poetry

Gayelene Carbis documents family obsessions, the enduring wounds of childhood, the familial shadows that pursue and possess us, and the subtle twists and shifts in human interaction that bedevil and fracture relationships. The result is an extended meditation upon loss and longing, and human fragility, tempered by moments of humour and beauty, and lines which leap out with radiant imagery and insight. Arnold Zable Nietzsche asserted that it is much easier to write nobly than it is to write lightly and Gayelene Carbis deploys this gift of quicksilver lightness like no other I can think of in contemporary Australian theatre or poetry. Marion May Campbell What I admire especially about these poems is their emotional honesty, their clear-headedness, their vulnerability and their range: how they marry the murderous and the marvelous, to use Seamus Heaney's words. These poems understand that each of us is flawed, and they forgive us. They have that courage, and they induce it. Mark Tredinnick ...Show more

Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry by Cassandra Atherton; Paul Hetherington

$39.99 AUD

Category: Poetry

Prose poetry is a resurgent literary form in the English-speaking world and has been rapidly gaining popularity in Australia. Cassandra Atherton and Paul Hetherington have gathered a broad and representative selection of the best Australian prose poems written over the last fifty years. The Anthology of Australian Prose Poetryincludes numerous distinguished prose poets--Jordie Albiston, joanne burns, Gary Catalano, Anna Couani, Alex Skovron, Samuel Wagan Watson, Ania Walwicz and many more; and documents prose poetry's growing appeal over recent decades, from the poetic margins to the mainstream. This collection reframes our understanding not only of this dynamic poetic form, but of Australian poetry as a whole. ...Show more

Arelhekenhe Angkentye Women's Talk: Poems of Lyapirtneme from Arrernte Women in Central Australia by Agnes Perrurle Abbott

$24.99 AUD

Category: Poetry

"Arrernte women are constantly stretched across two incongruent worlds. The world of Arrernte language, culture, kinship, country and knowledge systems which they are striving to protect and maintain on a daily basis. The modern world with its ongoing colonisation andrelentless pressures. Both of these worlds are captured in the poems" - Penny Drysdale ...Show more