March 21st is World Poetry Day, so here are some of our top picks for new poetry books you should pick up to mark the occasion!
Australian poetry
Eclipse
Kirli Saunders
Eclipse weaves reflections on Country with affirmation and cheek, fusing Beyoncé with quantum physics. Across three parts – Terrain, The Depths, and Constellations – proud Gunai woman Kirli Saunders transports readers with land, sea, and sky, playfully honing in on the intricacies of humanity, heartbreak, and connection.
Through free verse, experimental and concrete poems, Kirli taps into the rhythm of Ancestral wisdom, offering connection and healing from the wounds of love, grief, and our Nation's shared history. These poems celebrate the enduring strength found in kinship and Country itself, and at its heart, Eclipse is a dedication to Kirli's fierce and undying love for her community.
We Speak of Flowers
Eileen Chong
From award-winning poet Eileen Chong comes a dazzling book-length poem, comprising 101 interconnected fragments that can be read in any order, inviting the reader to construct multiple interpretations.
We Speak of Flowers, Eileen Chong's sixth collection, is a wondrous extended elegy dedicated to her ancestors. Its 101 pieces are a spacious, meditative record of an attempt to make sense of grief in the face of great pain. Chong's interweaving of memory, history and possibility showcases her mastery of poetic form and craft, all the while displaying her signature light touch in exploring the pathos of things.
The Empty Grandstand
Lloyd Jones
Lloyd Jones was seven years old the first time he climbed high into a grandstand to watch rugby with his father. The experience was baptismal. From his new elevated perspective Jones believed he could see everything that mattered – a field of play that rolled out, green with promise, from suburban New Zealand to the wider world.
The grandstand is a guiding metaphor for these questing narrative poems that reach back into childhood and forward into the life of a writer constantly experimenting with form and voice.
Jones writes of the wild secrets of boyhood – riding dogs, falling from trees, destroying the class ukuleles, learning to sail in small boats. He is alert to the airless small-town grievances that must inevitably be escaped.
mark the dawn
Jazz Money
A dazzling and impressive follow-up to Money's highly acclaimed debut, how to make a basket.
We gather marks. Our bodies, our stories, our histories and our world are made of an infinite amount of visible and invisible moments. We make marks to record, to remember, to honour, to protest. We mark time, for no matter how many times the sun sets, always it rises in a new dawn.
Jazz Money returns with her much anticipated new poetry collection to ask about all the ways we rise to a moment. mark the dawn is a celebration of community and gathering, while negotiating the legacies of intersecting histories as a queer First Nations person.
International Poetry
Girl
Ruth Padel
A portrait in verse of two iconic female figures – the Virgin Mary and the Cretan 'snake goddess' – unravelling the millennia of myth men have woven around them.
In Girl, Ruth Padel presents a triptych of interlocking sequences. A moving retelling of the Christian story transforms the Virgin Mary into a girl in a Primark T-shirt, facing a life shaped by divine will. Unearthed from the Cretan labyrinth, a prehistoric Snake Goddess is reshaped at the hands of a male archaeologist.
Between these evocative figures, myth turns personal. Delicately crafted lyrics, sometimes taking adventurous shapes, explore snapshots from the poet's own life blended with archetypes from India, European fairy tale, ancient Greece and Urban Dictionary – girl as soul, girl as creative energy, girl as the sacred power of nature, vulnerable but unstoppable.
Paper Boat
Margaret Atwood
Tracing the legacy of Margaret Atwood – a writer who has fundamentally shaped our contemporary literary landscapes – Paper Boat assembles Atwood's most vital poems in one essential volume.
In pieces that are at once brilliant, beautiful and hyper-imagined, Atwood gives voices to remarkably drawn characters – mythological figures, animals and everyday people – all of whom have something to say about what it means to live in a world as strange as our own. 'How can one live with such a heart?' Atwood asks, casting her singular spell upon the reader, and ferrying us through life, death and whatever comes next. Walking the tightrope between reality and fantasy as only she can, Atwood's journey through poetry illuminates our most innate joys and sorrows, desires and fears.
Time Is a Mother
Ocean Vuong
How else do we return to ourselves but to fold?
In this deeply intimate second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong searches for life among the aftershocks of his mother’s death, embodying the paradox of sitting within grief while being determined to survive beyond it. Shifting through memory, and in concert with the themes of his novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Vuong contends with personal loss, the meaning of family, and the cost of being the product of an American war in America. At once vivid, brave, and propulsive, Vuong’s poems circle fragmented lives to find both restoration as well as the epicentre of the break.
Autobiography of Red
Anne Carson
Published as a classic for the first time, this is Anne Carson's modern epic poem, an unconventional recreation of an ancient Greek myth and a wholly original coming-of-age story set in the present.
Tormented as a boy by his brother, Geryon escapes to a parallel world of photography. He falls deeply in love with Herakles, a golden young man, who deserts him at the peak of infatuation. So Geryon retreats ever further into the world created by his camera, fascinated by his wings, his redness and the fantastic accident of who he is. But all is suddenly and irrevocably shattered by Herakles' return.
Autobiography of Red is a deceptively simple narrative filled with currents of meaning, emotion, and the truth about what it's like to be red. An extraordinary, modern epic poem – moving, disturbing and delightful.
Poetry Anthology
Best of Australian Poems 2024
Edited by Shastra Deo & Kate Lilley
Best of Australian Poems is an annual anthology collecting previously published and unpublished poems to create a poetic snapshot and barometer of the year that was. Capturing the richness and diversity of Australian poetry across a timeframe of 1 July 2023 - August 2024, the series (now in its fourth year) explores how poetic responses to the contemporary moment develop with each passing year.
This edition opens with an introduction by its 2024 editors, multiple award-winning and highly respected poets and editors, Kate Lilley and Shastra Deo.
Words to Sing the World Alive
Edited by Jasmin McGaughey
Words to Sing the World Alive celebrates First Nations languages from across the continent. Forty First Nation writers and thinkers, journalists and lawyers, artists and astronomers come together to reveal their favourite and significant words. Words that evoke the power of childhood and the wonder of Country; that explore the essence of mother, of fire, of time. Words that are imbued with family and belonging, and that surprise with their connections.
Join contributors including Kim Scott, Tara June Winch, Daniel Browning, Nardi Simpson, Ellen van Neerven, Bruce Pascoe, Anita Heiss, Thomas Mayo, Evelyn Araluen, Claire G Coleman and Mykaela Saunders as they share their words to sing the world alive.
44 Poems on Being with Each Other
Edited by Pádraig Ó Tuama
This celebratory anthology explores human connection through forty-four poems carefully curated by the host of the internationally acclaimed Poetry Unbound podcast.
With an observant eye, Pádraig Ó Tuama shares an enlightening meditation on each poem, revealing the ways we relate to each other, the world around us and ourselves.
Blending humour with insight, tension with tenderness, complexity with care, this collection articulates the power of poetry itself; it illuminates aspects of the human condition, particularly the ways we are inextricably linked to each other, and provides inspiration for grounded self-reflection.
The Universe in Verse
Maria Popova, illustrated by Ofra Amit
The Universe in Verse is an ode to wonder and an exploration of the human search for truth and meaning.
Poetry and science, as Popova writes in her introduction, "are instruments for knowing the world more intimately and loving it more deeply." In 15 short essays on subjects ranging from the mystery of dark matter and the infinity of pi to the resilience of trees and the intelligence of octopuses, Popova tells the stories of scientific searching and discovery. Each essay is paired with a poem reflecting its subject by poets ranging from Emily Dickinson, W. H. Auden, and Edna St. Vincent Millay to Maya Angelou, Diane Ackerman, and Tracy K. Smith, and is stunningly illustrated by celebrated artist Ofra Amit. Together, they wake us to a "reality aglow with wonder."
Poetry for Kids
It's the Sound of the Thing
Maxine Beneba Clarke
It's the Sound of the Thing is an exuberant and evocative collection of poetry for young people from Maxine Beneba Clarke, one of Australia's most innovative and celebrated poets.
This extraordinary collection celebrates the joy of language and features enticing and relatable poems about everyday life – the sounds of the block, the boredom of detention and the happenings in the schoolyard. Poems about candy, peanut butter and pets. Poems about a big brother's messy room, a grandfather's fading memory and a grandmother's garden magic. For ages 8+.
ngayawanj bagan-nggul, ngayawanj barra barra-nggul
Vincentia High School students, with Kirli Saunders and Jaz Corr
ngayawanj bagan-nggul, ngayawanj barra barra-nggul is a collection of poems and stories in Dhurga and English, by students from Vincentia High School. The accompanying artwork, created by the students for the Community, honours the people and Country to which they belong.
The words and illustrations celebrate the students' deep relationship with the land and sea, revealing the places, animals and cultural practices that nourish, strengthen and inspire them all. These interconnected stories reveal that we, as a whole, are part of a greater narrative and therefore have an obligation to connect with and care for Mother Earth. For ages 12+.
I Am the Seed That Grew the Tree
Edited by Fiona Waters, illustrated by Frann Preston-Gannon
I Am the Seed That Grew the Tree, named after the first line of Judith Nicholls’ poem ‘Windsong’, is a lavishly illustrated collection of 366 nature poems. Filled with familiar favourites and new discoveries, written by a wide variety of poets, including William Blake, Emily Bronte, Charles Causley, Emily Dickinson, Carol Ann Duffy, Eleanor Farjeon, Robert Frost, Thomas Hardy, Christina Rossetti, William Shakespeare, John Updike, William Wordsworth and many more, this is the perfect book for children (and grown-ups!) to share.
Poetry Comics
Grant Snider
From the cloud-gazing hours of early spring to the lost bicycles of late autumn, Grant Snider’s brilliantly illustrated Poetry Comics will take you climbing, floating, swimming, and tumbling through all the year’s ups, downs, and in-betweens. He proves that absolutely everything, momentous or minuscule, is worthy of attention, whether snail shells, building blocks, the lamented late bus, or the rare joy of unscuffed shoes. These poems explore everything you never thought to write a poem about, and they’re so fun to read you’ll want to write one yourself. Not to worry, there’s a poem for that, too! For ages 7+.
