The Art Box Series
The Art Box Series aims to keep Australia’s best, most influential poetry in print — and within reach of a modest budget. You can order through our online store, or just print out or easy-to-use postal order form. Or just call or e-mail. The Art Box Series is expanding rapidly. To date, it includes:
Judith Beveridge, The Domesticity of Giraffes
David Campbell, The Man in the Honeysuckle
Gary Catalano, Fresh Linen
J. S. Harry, The Deer Under the Skin
Evan Jones, Understandings
Jean Kent, Verandahs
Andrew Lansdown, Waking and Always
Roger McDonald, Airship
Rhyll McMaster, Washing the Money
Jan Owen, Blackberry Season
Geoff Page, Smalltown Memorials
Roland Robinson, The Hooded Lamp
Judith Rodriguez, Mudcrab at Gambaro’s
Tom Shapcott, Shabbytown Calendar
R. A. Simpson, The Real Pompeii
Ken Taylor, At Valentine’s
Chris Wallace-Crabbe has agreed to act as Commissioning Editor for the next five titles in the series. Each volume costs just $15.
The Aegis Series
Many excellent titles published since 1990 have fallen out of print well before demand has been satisfied. The Aegis Series aims to keep them in print as well. They’re important contributions to our literature and, at $15 each, very affordable. The series so far includes:
Andrew Burke, Mother Waits for Father Late
Ali Cobby Eckerman’s Little Bit Long Time
Stephen Edgar’s Lost in the Foreground
Michael Sharkey’s The Sweeping Plain
We’re open to adding new volumes to this series. Interested poets and readers should contact us with suggestions by e-mail or post.
The Picaro New Work Series
Picaro Press is keen to support new work from both emerging and established Australian poets. In addition to our own initiatives, we are part of the Varuna Publisher Fellowship Program which aims to publish two or three new titles every year.
Another Dangerous Day is Peter Macrow’s fifth poetry collection, his fourth from Picaro Press. It confirms his reputation as one of the most distinctive and compelling voices in contemporary Australian poetry. Karen Knight says ‘Peter’s poetry is a voice nailed onto the human dramas of life. If you’re hungry for hard-hitting honesty, this collection will fill you up.’ And Liz Winfield adds, ‘Peter Macrow’s poetry shows the power of truth and beauty to transcend the human condition... And some of it delights for its sheer cantankerousness.’ Strong new work from a unique and popular voice!
Juliet A. Paine’s new poetry collection Foxes and Water Tanks has the cadence of a motorbike humming across a paddock, the drip of a leaky tap and the hush of an exam room. A rhythm that wraps itself around images of drowning foxes, childhood hockey matches and an unfulfilled dentist. Jude Aquilina says of the book that it, ‘reflects truth and originality — from the natural world where summer sky is alfoil, to an array of human experiences such as ‘rabbiting’, where teens grasp the ute’s crossbar like a bridle on a bucking bull — vivid imagery is loaded skilfully into every poem. Another strong collection vetted through the Varuna Publisher Fellowship Program.
Marian Spires is a powerful new Victorian voice; this excellent book came out of the Melbourne Writers Festival. Patricia Sykes says that ‘Reading these poems is like being guided through an exhibition. Vivid and disparate, the guides are the voices of some of the women who featured in van Gogh’s life and art. In the process, Vincent is lifted out of the stilled frame of history into moments of the timelessness he so celebrated and painted.’ An exceptional new manuscript, and a singularly rewarding read.
Peter Coghill’s Rockclimber’s Hands is so deft and assured you could be excused for thinking he was already a mid-career poet, but to realise this is his first volume makes the poems even more astounding. His precision and technical control, his range of subjects, his acute and steadfast intellect give this work vitality and gleam. His paeans to nature and to the everyday have a quiet, unobtrusive force. For its formal richness and beautifully calibrated lines, this is a wonderfully impressive first book.
— Judith Beveridge
Peter Lach-Newinsky’s first collection The Post-Man Letters, is a significant achievement. There is richness of almost every kind — in form, subject matter, breadth of thought, diction, voice, experimentation, erudition, word play. There is also grace, beauty and profundity.
— Deb Westbury
Both of these fine books were developed in cooperation with Varuna - The Writers’ House, as part of the Publisher Fellowship Program
Jennifer Compton was born in New Zealand in 1949, moved to Australia in 1972, and lived in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales for many years before relocating to Melbourne. Her poetry provokes and delights in roughly equal measure: ‘Cool eye, warm heart, sharp bite,’ as Anna Volska observes on the back cover of her third book Blue. In recent years Jennifer has travelled in Italy, and in the countries which used to be Yugoslavia. Barefoot is her fifth book of poetry.
Our list of New Work titles is constantly expanding. Upcoming ... new titles from Roland Leach, John Watson, Stefanie Bennett, and more! Stay tuned. The complete list to date is:
Michelle Cahill, ed. Poetry Without Borders
Maxine Clarke, Gil Scott Heron is On Parole
Peter Coghill, Rockclimber’s Hands
Jennifer Compton, Barefoot
Stephen Clendinnen, Oblivion
Kevin Densley, Lionheart Summer
Kevin Densley, Vigorous Vernacular
Phil Hammial, Swan Song
Shé Hawke, Depot Girl
Evan Jones, Alone at Last!
Evan Jones, Heaven’s Above!
Kit Kelen, God Preserve Me ...
Peter Lach-Newinsky, The Post-Man Letters
Roland Leach, My Father’s Pigs
Geoff Lemon, Sunblind
Peter Macrow, Another Dangerous Day
Mark O’Flynn, Untested Cures ...
Juliet Paine, Foxes and Watertanks
Marian Spires, Knowing Vincent
Heather Taylor Johnson, Exit Wounds
van Langenberg & Hawke, Tender Muse
John Watson, Four Refrains
Steve Woodbury, Red in the Middle
Ouyang Yu, Reality Dreams
Each book costs AUD$15 (with the exception of Shé Hawke’s Depot Girl, 168 pps, AUD$20). Postage within Australia is included; for overseas orders, please add $5 per book to cover shipping costs. To order, use our ‘postal’ order form — feel free to e-mail it, or just list the titles you’d like.