Les Wicks gathered an international crowd to build the poetry anthology ‘Class’, published in Australia in 2024 by Meuse Press. The book grew directly out of debates held in Canada and India across 2023 and 2024. It tackles the reality of economic divides during an era when the gap between rich and everyone became extreme.
Instead of pushing a single political line, this collection serves up a mixture of human friction. Dozens of writers contribute, including Jeltje Fanoy, PiO, Vaughan Rapatahana, Marra PL. Lanot, and Gabriel Rosenstock. These poems break through social walls, exposing human vulnerability and the stubborn fight for common ground.
Over time, grief and loss change shape. So much of what remains lives in gesture, language, and the things we learned without ever formally being taught them. I know there are those of you out there who have lost the most important people in your lives, and I often find myself thinking about this great mystery. What is this life if it were not for them? To have learned, to have watched closely, to have listened, and now, without being told, to know where to place our hands. I think I can make some guesses about life and its meaning, but I cannot make sense of death, or what life there may be after it. I believe in the mystery of it all, and can only really rely on memory, however inaccurate memory itself may sometimes be. Perhaps memory is the afterlife. I wrote this poem about my father, and I was fortunate enough to have it included in the Montreal Poetry Prize anthology in 2020.
Susan Wald’s Queenscliff Monotypes is opening on 26 March 2026, and continues until 13 April 2026, at Queenscliff Gallery. She will be at the gallery on Sunday 29 March 2026 to talk about the work. Details below …
Alex Skovron’s new book, Switchpoints, is a collection of 100 narratives in prose and verse. It was published in March 2026. A link to the publishers, Puncher & Wattmann, can be found at the foot of this page.
A philosopher sets about compiling an encyclopaedia of embraces; an artist accuses her mirror of a lifetime of dishonesty; a flâneur collects melodies from the faces of passing strangers; an author envisions the ultimate map charting every single move of his existence; a girl dreams of a magic box that would tell her everything …
Switchpoints, Alex Skovron’s twelfth book, is a collection of 100 short narrative pieces, some in prose, others in verse. It is inhabited by a broad assortment of individuals of all ages, from children to the elderly, visited at particular and possibly significant moments in their daily life—moments of doubt or discovery, inertia or inspiration, of personal reflection, reminiscence or philosophical musing. There are skewed apprehensions and tender recognitions, lingering regrets and poignant realizations—‘switchpoint’ moments that trigger a jolt in thought or demeanour, or signal a shift in viewpoint or sense of self; or may not. The prod might be a line from a novel or poem, a painting or a piece of music, a landmark, a famous disaster, or perhaps no more than a sudden idea, a fading dream or an elusive recollection. Underpinning it all is a fascination with the workings of mind, the riddles of memory, the mystique of time.
Sunday 15th February 2026 starting 3:00pm for 3:30pm
Poetic Witness: Personal and Political
On Steep Curve by Robyn Rowland
When her father, Norm Rowland OAM is almost 100, Robyn returns from Ireland. Initially companion, then carer during covid, she lives with him in the house he built 65 years before.
Their relationship grows through physical and emotional challenges, anger, frustration, grief and love. Poems for Norm from previous years are interwoven here. Heartbreaking and tender, a book created with love and skill: this is the poetic narrative of their shared journey.
On Seang by Anne Casey
For the 180th anniversary of the Great Irish Famine’s commencement, Seang (Hungering) poignantly reclaims the human story behind the lost history of a group of rebel girls who were daughters of Irish famine refugees to Australia. It seeks to restore voice to these girls and their families, who were silenced over and over during their lives, and who suffered destitution, discrimination, and intergenerational incarceration and hardships largely driven by colonial policies, attitudes and actions in Ireland and in Australia. Incorporating award-winning research and poetry, Seang offers a beacon for the 473 million children in our world today who are impacted by conflict and extreme food insecurity driven by the same three factors – climate, politics and economics.
Poetry Sydney is an independent literary organisation committed to a presence for poetry in our culture.
The Australian Poetry Publishers directory is a portal for poets to have their poems published, to encourage Australian poetry to be purchased and to support Australian Poetry Publishers in enabling poets to have the opportunity to be published. Publishers on this list are those who publish poetry within Australia.
Chris was Professor Emeritus in the Australian Centre of the University of Melbourne, of which he was a founding director. During his long and distinguished career, he was a Harkness Fellow at Yale University, and the Harvard University Chair of Visiting Professor of Australian Studies.
In 2011, Chris was made a Member of the Order of Australia for services to the arts, and in 2015, he was awarded the Melbourne Prize for Literature.
Chris wrote the introduction to Joyce Lee’s It is nearly dark when I come to the Indian Ocean.
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