Peter Boyle, The Wide Starless Silence

‘Late in his career, Boyle has embarked on one of the most sustained flights of inspiration of any writer currently working. The results are luminous.’ Declan Fry, ABC

The natural world, dream material and childhood memory are interwoven across The Wide Starless Silence, a book-length sequence of poems that continues Boyle’s late career exploration of questions of mortality, human values, time, art, ethical action and our place in the natural world. Arranged in three sections modulated by different seasons and thematic emphases, the book examines experiences of loss, grief and ageing, and the role of memory, love and artistic creativity in resisting despair. Although these experiences are intensely personal they offer a philosophically charged engagement with questions of mortality, selfhood and meaning vested in a shared humanity. Building on his previous award-winning collections, such as Enfolded in the Wings of Darkness and Companions, Ancestors, Inscriptions, The Wide Starless Silence offers a sustained dialogue with the cosmos’ apparent silence and makes explicit a spirituality that has evolved through the consolations and insights of a lifetime devoted to art, philosophy and creativity. 

‘The poems’ psychological and emotional pressure points are those embedded in the experience of loss, uncertainty, aging, and fragility in fragmented times. They are profound responses to a difficult world. Each piece flows easefully and skilfully between the intrinsic and the extrinsic, creating an intensity and resonance barely matched by other contemporary poets.’ Judith Beveridge

Peter Boyle is a poet and translator of poetry living and working on Dharug land. He has ten books of poetry published and eight books as a translator of poetry from Spanish and French. His most recent collections are Companions, Ancestors, Inscriptions (2024), Ideas of Travel (2022) and Notes Towards the Dreambook of Endings (2021). In 2020 his book Enfolded in the Wings of a Great Darkness won the New South Wales Premier's Award for Poetry. His book Ghostspeaking also received the New South Wales Premier's Award in 2017. Other prize-winning books include Apocrypha (2009), The Blue Cloud of Crying (1997) and Coming Home from the World (1993). He has performed his poetry at International Poetry Festivals in Colombia, France, Venezuela, Macedonia, Canada, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Spain. His poems have been translated into Spanish, French, German, Chinese, Macedonian, Vietnamese, Korean and Russian. As a translator his books include Anima by Cuban poet José Kozer, The Trees: Selected Poems of Eugenio Montejo and Three Poets: Olga Orozco, Marosa Di Giorgio and Jorge Palma. In 2013 he was awarded the New South Wales Premier's Award for Literary Translation. He holds a Doctorate in Creative Arts from the University of Western Sydney.

Peter Boyle, The Wide Starless Silence
September 2026. 148mm x 210mm. 112pp.
ISBN 978-1-925735-86-4

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.