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 | ELDERSHAW
Stephen Edgar
A children’s game in an overgrown garden is the first hint of a
troubling presence in the old house ‘Eldershaw’. But is the haunting a
memory of the past inscribed in the stonework or a discord the
occupants have brought with them?
At
the heart of Stephen Edgar’s compelling new collection are three
interlinked narrative poems ranging forwards and backwards in time from
the Second World War to the present day. Drawing on personal
experience, reimagined and transformed through the lens of fiction,
they enact those charged episodes which shape and scar the lives of
several characters. From the dim rooms of ‘Eldershaw’, to the
recollected infernos of war, to the uncanny waters of a seaside pool,
these narratives affect us with a moving and haunting power.
A Co-winner of the Colin Roderick Award
(Stephen Romei comments here in The
Australian)
Eldershaw has been short-listed
for the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Poetry. This what the
judges said:
|  | THE HANGING OF JEAN LEE Jordie
Albison
Prize-winning
poet Jordie Albiston’s third book is dramatic. It spotlights the crunch
times in the life of Jean Lee 1919-1951 from adventurous girl to hanged
woman. It captures the times, the completion of the Harbour Bridge, the
youth culture of the milk bars, the 'overpaid, oversexed, over here’
American servicemen during the War, the invasion of petty crims for the
1949 Melbourne Cup won by Faxzami. Above all, it understands. Jean's
last God-troubled speeches raise her mean life to suburban tragedy.
In this richly magical
procession of poems, Albiston re-imagines how the grim life of Jean Lee
stepped along its course to her execution. The book is a triumph of
grasp and sympathy.
Chris Wallace-Crabbe
The God poems are terrific -
they have unafraidness and tension that is sheer coiled energy. The
Hanging of Jean Lee is strong, it’s passionate, it’s truthful and it’s
complex. And it’s tremendously disciplined poetry.
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|  | HIDDEN - A
Graphic Novel
Mirranda Burton
At
first glance, Mirranda Burton's art room is a hidden world full of
strange eccentric characters and mysterious minds. But stay a while and
in that room you'll find all the joy and sadness of life, the pain and
comfort of community, and the ultimate meaning of art. In Hidden
Mirranda Burton is writing about what matters most, and she does so
with such gentle humanity and wisdom. It is one of the most beautiful
books I have ever read.
Dylan
Horrocks, author of Hicksville
In a simple yet effective visual
style reminiscent of Persepolis but wholly its own - and peppered with
some pictures so vivid as to be photographic - local artist Mirranda
Burton draws on her time spent as an art teacher for those with
intellectual disabilities. Her tales are hopeful, dramatic, always
emotionally involving, and never condescending.
Fiona Hardy,
Readings Carlton
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| COLOMBINE
New
and Selected Poetry
Jennifer Harrison
Colombine
unusually contains two sets of ravish new poems, the title sequence and
another called Fugue.
The poems
selected from her previous collections, from the Anne Elder
Award-winning Michelangelo's
Prisoners to her fourth book, Folly & Grief,
illustrate the depth of her talent.
Jennifer Harrison
is astonishing. She
comes from a place
that was previously
unknown
|  | THE PEASTICK
GIRL
Susan Hancock
The
story of Teresa Matheson, her sisters Mollie and Cass, and the untimely
and mysterious death of their mother. Teresa has returned to Wellington
after five years in Melbourne where she has written a quest novel for
younger readers, had two affairs, and met the demon Arkeum. The
Peastick Girl is a
complex tragi-comedy of manners.
A
brave, sensuous and wildly original novel —
I’ve never read
anything quite like it.
Helen
Garner
A brief summary can’t really do
justice to the complexities of this highly gifted novel... All this is
given a lustre and intensity by her precise, musical prose, with its
matchless evocations of the weather and the landscapes around
Wellington and the fugitive subtleties of her characters’ inner lives. Owen Richardson, The Age
|  | WIMMERA
Homer Rieth
Replacing
the battles of heroes and gods with the struggle of mortal humans with
time and space, Homer Rieth in Wimmera re-invents the epic. All the
classical elements are there but they are now democratic, and ours. The
narrator’s anonymous informant knows a thing or two. Objective and
personal, learned and demotic, local and vast, Wimmera is the history
of a region and seedbed of a vision where ‘the bunyip indeed lays down
with the manticore.’ There is nothing like it anywhere.
Grand
in conception and impressively detailed in execution, this is a
significant achievement indeed, and a major contribution to Australian
literature. That
Homer Rieth is one of the finest lyric poets writing in Australia was
apparent with the publication in 2001 of "The Dining Car Scene".
It’s an impressive
achievement, and a remarkable piece of work.
Paul
Kane
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