Congratulations to Lucy Holt who has won the Queensland Literary Awards with her most recent collection Three Books.
'These are the work of a poet at the peak of her considerable technical abilities and imaginative range ... Holt transforms language into invocation, holding it by its stem.'
Judith Wright Calanthe Award Judges
Congratulations to Ayako Takahashi and Judy Halebsky who have been shortlisted for the 2024 Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize for their translation of Ryoichi Wago's Since Fukushima.
'To read Wago Ryoichi's Since Fukushima is to wake up in a hall of mirrors. Not the kind Bruce Lee enters in Enter the Dragon. In Halebsky & Takahashi’s astounding translation of Wago's world, the mirrors face the walls, while their opaque sides stare at you. And while in Bruce Lee's room you would be lost among your doppelgangers, in Wago's you will be alone. This is not to say he has wrought a language of nihilism. Quite the opposite. Wago's speaker, like a water diviner, locates hope in the aftermath of the nuclear disaster. There is no greater achievement than this.'
Eric Hyett, Archana Madhavan, and Shriram Sivaramakrishnan
2024 Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize Judges' comments
We're happy to announce the release of six new titles in October.
All six are now available to pre-order. Order now and be the first to read them hot off the press.
"With its beautiful pacing and intimate lyrical voice, Tais Rose Wae’s Riverbed Sky Songs draws us into its world of making and remaking, its sensuously crafted lines and graceful cadences braiding thought, emotion and image into poems that radiate wonder and beauty. Reading these poems, it feels like we are participating in their unfolding, in physical acts of weaving and shaping ideas and feelings into something real, something ‘to be held / with care, with custodianship’. It is a truly marvellous first book, its freshness of voice and vision promising restoration and renewal in its enchanting music and quiet, pristine beauty.
Riverbed Sky Songs opens with ‘Epilogue to Ceremony’, its first lines ‘We found an early dream of you / in the rockpool fringed with grass’ discovering a space for an exquisite conversation between unborn child and mother. From here a journey expands with the arrival of the child through vision to womb to encompass a poetic encounter with place and self over the first seasons of the child’s life. This intimate, delicate tracery of water and land, self, connection and solitude invites the reader to witness the intricate networks it maps. This is an intuitive, meticulously braided and integrated work of quiet, dauntless power, shaped by a quality of reverent attentiveness."
NSW Premier's Literary Awards Judges' comments
Six new titles including our 25th Anniversary anthology with 440 pages of poetry from around Asia Pacific. Available to pre-order now.
'This book is the business! Smart-mouthed, pussy-bowed. Pitch perfect filthy snippets of office lore and career advice.'
'The collection bursts with jokes, wordplay, curious facts, and striking thoughts expressed with the evident delight of an unexpected discovery. Its vibrant and brilliantly angular poems are full of surprising rhythmic effects, their tone by turns playful, arch, knowing and amused.'
We're hugely grateful to our readers who have helped the press survive floods and the pandemic over the last two years by buying a book or contributing to our fundraising campaigns.
Every book you buy helps keep us publishing.