Poetry

Taller When Prone is Les Murray's first volume of new poems since 2006's The Biplane Houses. With characteristic grace and dexterity, these poems combine a mastery of form with a matchless ear for the Australian vernacular. Many evoke rural life - its rhythms and rituals, the natural world, the landscape and the people who have shaped it.

The collection exhibits both Murray's unfailing grace as a writer and his ability to write in any voice, style and genre. The suite of works include, story poems, word-plays, history to myth-making and more. The subjects range from Asperger's Syndrome to Germaine Greer to Japanese sword blades.

A good poem is one that the world can't forget or is delighted to rediscover. This landmark anthology of Australian poetry, edited by two of Australia's foremost poets, Geoffrey Lehmann and Robert Gray, contains such poems. It is the first of its kind for Australia and promises to become a classic. Included here are Australia's major poets, and lesser-known but equally affecting ones, and all manifestations of Australian poetry since 1788, from concrete poems to prose poems, from the cerebral to the naive, from the humorous to the ... read more

Poetry, we are often told these days, is obsolete. Yet there are two situations in particular that awaken the dormant yearning for 'memorable speech', as one popular definition of poetry describes it. One is a wedding and the other is a funeral. This collection, edited by acclaimed poet Jamie Grant, provides the words to mark these occasions in an Australian context. Ranging from the early nineteenth century to the present day, this moving anthology roams the dark, ecstatic, funny, mournful moments we experience during love and los... read more

A collection of Australian poems.

In this wonderful, vigorously contemporary translation, Craig Hill has captured the liveliness, satiric wit, and poetic beauty that made Jean de la Fontaine famous during his lifetime and his Fables celebrated as a masterwork of world literature ever since. Despite la Fontaine s deceptively modest claim that all he intended was to put the moral tales of Aesop and other ancient fabulists into poetry for the pleasure of Louis XIV s young son, his real accomplishment, as later generations have understood, was holding a mirror up to th... read more

This book contains a collection of nature poems and art work, lovingly designed and crafted by Melbourne-based artist, Bee Williamson. The work huddles around her love of Nature, where she finds peace, joy and the inspiration to write and draw, deep within the source and solace of nature's gentle hand. Her grandfather, acclaimed nature writer Henry Williamson, encouraged Bee, through his undeniable spiritual presence, to reveal her deep expresison and concerns within this work, her second ublished book, "Nature - a gift". The simpl... read more

Edward FitzGerald's much-loved, often-quoted, best-selling 1859 translation of the Rubaiyat (650 editions in 150 years), with Attar's charming narrative poem, Bird Parliament. Extensive new introduction with notes and chronology.

With an introduction and bibliography, Andrew Barton (Banjo) Paterson may fairly be regarded as Australia's national poet. "Waltzing Matilda", "Clancy of the Overflow" and "The Man from the Snowy River" still strike a chord in the hearts of Australians wherever they may be, evoking, as they do, the rough life and values of the outback. The apparent simplicity of the ballad form which 'Banjo' embraced so wholeheartedly is balanced by many syllabic irregularities and internal rhyme. This harks back to the old ballads of the English a... read more

The poetry selected for this collection reveals Paterson's love and appreciation for the Australian bush and its people.

William Shakespeare's sonnets are a beautiful expression of a range of human emotions – from love to grief, anger, jealousy and lust. Including the instantly recognisable 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day'' as well as a range of other equally moving works, this compilation brings together the complete collection of all 154 of Shakespeare's sonnets.

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"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" Shakespeare's much-quoted sonnets are some of the most beautiful and moving poems in English literature. Dealing with love, beauty and the effects of time, they speak to us as directly now as they spoke to Elizabethan readers. This handsome edition of Shakespeare's sonnets is based on the Arden Shakespeare edition, making authoritative texts available to the more general reader who wants to read for pleasure rather than study. A must for all Shakespeare and poetry lovers. Published as a sma... read more

The Wordsworth Poetry Library comprises the works of the greatest English-speaking poets, as well as many lesser-known poets. Each collection has a specially commissioned introduction.

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In this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their prefaces, the editors offer insights into their own work as well as providing an accessible and passionate introduction to the most important poets in our literature. Earth has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty - This is composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802.

A landmark anthology celebrating a new generation of Australian poets. The year 1968 marked a turning point in Australian poetry, when a dynamic wave of new poets sought to revitalise a 'moribund poetic culture'. At the helm of that generation was John Tranter, who argued that there would be cycles or generations of poets with peak moments where new poets would emerge to revitalise the culture. Forty years later, with a spate of superb debut collections, Australian poetry has never looked so energetic and vital. From the imaginativ... read more

Winner of many prestigious awards, including the Bonner Award for Poetry, Germany's Petrarch Prize, and the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, Tomas Transtromer captures the mood of an era which is at once lonely and threatening. Few poets are capable of relating basic truths about the human condition in troubled times with such quiet grace and figurative skill. This volume vitally represents the immense talent and insight of one of the world's finest poets.

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