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To paraphrase Alan’s own words, you can imagine what the publication of over five decades of work means to the author. For the reader, Near Believing is a timely opportunity to revisit, or to visit for the first time and hopefully be inspired to pursue, the work of one of Australia’s most celebrated poets – I was about to say ‘illustrious’ but could imagine Alan grimacing at that.

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Like all good poetry, Kathryn’s writing has instant delights, but it also offers rewards which do not fade with each revisiting. As well as the pleasures in particular poems, though, this book is remarkable for the scope of its content. There are decades of knowledge and experience behind this poetry, and although Kathryn has a very light touch, her spirit is unfailingly generous as she moves us through a kaleidoscope of topics, all of which have somehow sprung from her own “simply extraordinary business of being” (to quote from her poem ‘On William Robinson’s Later Harvest’).

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Alex has often said that he likes to push language. In this collection, language and poetic form are pushed in particular ways. He has returned to the long poem, a feature of his first collection. The long poem gives the poet room to move. Let’s focus on that idea because travel, journeying—in the world, across time, and in the mind—is a major theme of this collection.

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Walking on a beach on the far south coast I found a metaphor for Anna Couani’s “Local” — a deep ocean shell, cast up from the sea, weathered to reveal its interior spirals. At the apex, a perfect miniature of mature shell- the mollusc’s first home—succeeded by whorls revolving outwards. The creature inside carries its past on its back and all its history is simultaneously present— past and present touch one another.

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Body Shell Girl is a special book – layered, creative, complicated. On one level we can approach it as a confessional, a delivery of one woman’s story where the subject matter is clear – we know Rose has created a verse novel inspired in her own words by ‘the radioactive journals’ she kept in the first two years of a decade long stint in the sex industry – in this way the book joins a conversation, a context with other books that explore this industry from different points of view.

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The verse novel is a form now in constant transition and evolution, and here we see a huge range of writers interviewed, and their individual work explored. The Verse Novel Australia & New Zealand (2021) throws a wide and inclusive net, almost literally across the sea, from Australia to New Zealand, including parts of the Pacific.

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Once considered amongst the giants of Australian literature, Katharine Susannah Prichard moved in a broad and fascinating social circle, friends with many of the literary and political greats in this country, Alfred Deakin, John Curtin, H.V. (Doc) Evatt, Miles Franklin, Vance and Nettie Palmer amongst them. Prichard, a foundation member of the Communist Party of Australia in 1921, was a writer of fiction, poetry and memoir, and lesser known as a playwright.

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Simplicity and dedication are two apt words to sum up The Pink Book, a collection of images and memoirs from Henry Von Doussa. The book is a series of personal essays and collages bound in an exquisite coffee-table book; it bursts with colour and nuance yet simplicity and dedication to the characters and stories that lie within.

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