Mark Roberts (co-editor of Rochford Street Review) and 5 Islands Press invite you to the Sydney Launch of 

The Office of Literary Endeavours

To be launched by Les Wicks with Angela Stretch as your MC
on Sunday 25 May 2025, 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm
Benledi House, 186 Glebe Point Rd, Glebe NSW 2037, Australia

Entry is free but please register to assist with planning and catering.
Register here

If you can’t make the launch you can buy The Office of Literary Endeavours directly from 5 Islands Press.
Click here to order

About the book

The Office of Literary Endeavours is a wise and reverential book by a gentle and accomplished poet at a high point of his writing life. This collection of keenly observed and deeply human poems traces inner and outer journeys, within Australia and overseas. Roberts lends his deft touch to subjects and places both new and old. In this engaging, accessible, insightful, entertaining, witty and, at times, playful book, you will find poems of exile and dispossession; about the landscape, and the passion of lovers; about old friendships and favourite films. In this witty and insightful book, Roberts evidences a life spent in appreciation of poetry, in deep observation and in participation in ecologies of many kinds. The experience and wisdom acquired show in the breadth of his subject matter, and his mastery of tonal range. This is a book evidencing a life spent in appreciation of poetry, deep observation and participation in ecologies of many kinds. Discomfort is constant but there is succour and reprieve in kin and creative expression. The Office of Literary Endeavours is a wise and reverential book by a gentle and accomplished poet at a high point of their writing life.

–AMANDA JOY

**

The poetry is carefully crafted and elegant. The subject matter wide ranging and richly brought to life within the forms Roberts has chosen. Reading through this collection has been a privilege and a delight.

–LES WICKS

**

The Office of Literary Endeavours is a witty and insightful collection characterised by its lucidity. The strength of these poems lies in their interrogation of migration and colonisation through poignant familial memories that are never sentimental but always elegiac, with their critique of colonisation and account of Irish dispossession.  A feature  of the collection is  the way  it deftly navigates different moods, so that alongside the poems of migration and colonisation there are also poems about the landscape, the passion of lovers, old friendships, and favourite films. A sharply observant eye unites these poems into a cohesive manuscript of layered emotions and experiences.

–TINA GIANNOUKOS

**

Roberts lends his deft touch to subjects and places both new and old, and specifically to what must always resonate as essential to the human condition–continuously, from pram to old age. In his shared memories, real and invented, ancient and modern, a jam jar or two might be shot for target practice, deadly snakes slung over wire fences, trains might be caught or missed.  Here is subject matter to engage seasoned poetry readers, as well as keen students of Australian literature and cultural history: a lively content able to both re-trace and advance, often simultaneously.

–JOHN JENKINS

**

The Office of Literary Endeavours is an excellent collection of poetry that demonstrates the poet’s range, skill, talent, experience and wisdom, along with his willingness to experiment with form (including lines, stanza structures and the shape of the poem) and to engage with crucial contemporary issues (such as Indigenous and non-Indigenous relationships to country) as well as European culture and history (as demonstrated through the sequence of poems inspired by films). The book is engaging, accessible, insightful, entertaining, witty and, at times, playful.

–NATHANAEL O’REILLY

**

The Office of Literary Endeavours is a collection of keenly observed and deeply human poems. In his new book, Roberts evokes a series of places and moments, presenting personal experience beside evocative lines of activism and haunting reflection on historic and current national atrocities (“River poem” is a particularly fine example of the latter). Employing various poetic forms, precise lyricism and distinctive natural imagery, this profoundly beautiful work reinforces what makes Roberts such a widely admired and singular poet. The final lines of the poem “pearl meat” capture a life in poetry and the resonant value of this remarkable collection perfectly: “there is a passion here/that promises years”. This is poetry to live with and revisit often,

– ROBBIE COBURN

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