Monday, 1 September 2025

Incandescence launched!

My new book Incandescence was launched yesterday at Fullers Bookshop in nipaluna / Hobart on the (supposedly) last day of Winter 2025.

It was such a joy and an honour to share the afternoon with a packed room of friends, family, colleagues, comrades, poets, and supporters, as Esther Ottaway and I read and talked about the collection.

Huge thanks to Fullers Bookshop, Esther Ottaway, Susanna Fishburn, Penelope Clark, and Deb Terry for helping make the afternoon such a success (and for capturing photos and videos I’m sharing below) — and to everyone who came along to celebrate with me.

Below are the launch speeches in case you couldn’t get along, or you can watch the 30 minute video here on YouTube if you’d prefer, (excuse the intermittent café noise in the background).

I’ve shared some of the poems on Facebook in images and videos over the previous few weeks so make sure you check them out by liking my page Susan Austin Poet here.

There are plenty of books still available at Fullers, Hobart bookshop or online via this website. Let me know what your favourite poem is!



Incandescence book launch – 31 August 2025, Fullers Bookshop, nipaluna / Hobart

Launch speech by Esther Ottaway for Susan Austin’s Incandescence

Good afternoon, it’s so wonderful to see such a big room full of wonderful people here today and thank you for your support of Tasmanian poetry.  

I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land we are meeting on today, the Muwinina / Mouheneener people, and their continuing custodianship and connection to this beautiful area where we are fortunate to be live and work.

It’s a pleasure to welcome you here to the launch of Incandescence, the luminous new poetry collection by one of Tasmania’s favourite poets and one of just ten poets longlisted in this year’s Tasmanian Literary Awards, Susan Austin.

Susan’s first book, Undertow, is one of my favourite books of the last fifteen years, and has the great honour of looking like this, all wrinkled, because it’s such a good book that I had to take it with me into the bath – and that is the mark of an amazing book, right?!

And her verse novel which lays bare the experience of infertility is another of my favourite books – so gripping, and incredibly emotionally compelling. It was my great pleasure to share the day of the launch of Dancing With Empty Prams with my own book about girls and women on the spectrum, She Doesn’t Seem Autistic. 

Today we celebrate a new book, and we honour a voice – one that burns with insight, tenderness, humour, and fire. Many of you will know Susan not only as a poet, but as a mental health occupational therapist, a mother, an activist, and a generous member of our Tasmanian literary community. Her work is deeply grounded in lived experience, giving us poems rich with social observation, domestic detail, and honestly rendered experiences of motherhood, memory, grief, resilience, and hope. 

In Incandescence, Susan has crafted a collection that arises from the everyday, while expanding into the universal. These themes of parenting, caregiving, surviving a pandemic, holding a marriage together, walking through grief, and making space for joy, even amid exhaustion, mean that her poems glow with warmth and insight, even when they explore moments of deep difficulty.

Susan’s poetry is also full of humour – sometimes gentle, sometimes biting. We see it in the verb-filled, joyful, exhausting poem The purposeful occupations of a two-year-old; I’ll read you the opening:

 

wall scribbling                                               stick poking

               sand throwing                                               rash cream smearing

 

toast tossing                                                                 cup tipping

               crumb swiping                               chewed cashew spitting

 

clothes snipping                                                          bead sucking

               backyard absconding                                 roadside dashing

 

and so on through to the end, where the child is

 

first story competing                                                  lap wrestling

               in-to-bed protesting                                                   middle-of-the-night calling

 

As well as formal poems, Susan invents her own forms, in one instance a poem in the bars of a cage, in another a Venn diagram, where she overlays the frustrations of two people in a relationship with their area of commonality, to brilliant effect.  There is also portraiture of others beyond the family, fictional or near-fictional characters painted with Susan’s clear-eyed insight and deep compassion as a mental health occupational therapist.  Then there is a powerful Covid sequence, bringing back the heartbreaking distancing of those years, as in Outsiders:

 

Mu husband returns from Flinders Island,

drops bread and milk at the door.

He stands three metres away, mask on, to talk.

My son runs to hug him.

We shout in unison –

No!

 

And Susan’s deeply incisive reflections of our modern lives, as in Quality time, which I’ll read in full:

 

my iPhone –

               Facebook

               weather

               calendar

               emails

               texts

               news

my curved back

my slight frown

 

my two-year-old –

               shaking her red egg-shaped maraca

               beaming at me

               until I notice

               her joy

 

This is Susan at her best – cutting to the bone of matters, attuned to the disorientation of our contemporary lives, and capable of capturing so much emotion in a handful of lines. These moments accumulate throughout the collection: the relational, the bittersweet, the luminous. And they reflect Susan’s gift for balancing vulnerability and strength, fragility and fortitude.

Susan’s voice is important and clear – a voice you want to return to. These poems are so often about seeing – really seeing – the world, others, our children, ourselves. And they are a gift for all of us who are navigating messy, beautiful, full-to-the-brim lives.

So please join me in congratulating Susan on the release of Incandescence.  She is, indeed, a bearer of light, as she engages us fully with the work of life and love.  Please welcome Susan. 





Susan Austin’s speech and reading:

Thank you so much Esther, and thank you to Tim and Rohan and Fullers Bookshop for hosting today’s event.

Poetry has always been with me.

I’ve been writing poetry since the age of eight. My mother encouraged me by buying me a 240-page hardcover exercise book to record final drafts in my neatest handwriting. My main goal in life was to fill that book up with poems! This goal was interrupted somewhat after moving to Brisbane when I was 17 to go to uni. I got involved with environmental and social justice campaign groups, and became the co-ordinator of a socialist youth group, at the same time as paying my way through a high-course-load university degree by doing two or three part-time jobs. So not much time for poetry! I finished my poetry book while traveling overseas for a year when I was 25. It felt like I had achieved my life’s goal at age 25! The poems in this book, and many of the poems that came after, plot my personal development and many of my life experiences, and I really like having this sort of record to look back over, although it’s not the reason I write poetry – it’s just a bonus.

I'm so grateful to have released three books into the world, with many thanks to all the people that have made that possible. 

For those who aren’t familiar with my books, Undertow largely grew out of experiences in my twenties. As a young woman learning the ropes in a community mental health team and practicing occupational therapy with a diverse range of people in a low socioeconomic area, and as a solo backpacker traveling to many parts of the world, the poems in it cover travel, relationships, mental illness, feminism, and lots in between. 

Dancing with Empty Prams tells the story of a woman whose plan to have a baby takes her on a journey she never expected. Long-listed for this year’s Tasmanian Literary Awards, it's a verse novel inspired by infertility experiences that had a big impact on my life in my early thirties.

My new book, Incandescence, is drawn largely from experiences I’ve had over the last decade, my 40s. It’s a poetry collection that illuminates the wonderful highs and the shattering lows of parenting, the ways in which we connect or disconnect with each other, (including through the early covid pandemic), the things and places we turn to for solace, and how we can struggle within interpersonal relationships. While I deeply love nature, I tend to be drawn to writing more about people, and like all my books, it looks at people and our efforts to get by with compassion. I hope it enhances understanding and connection between us.

Thanks to Tony, Pamela and Kate from my poetry circle for being such supportive poetry peers, and to my book group for being the best groupies ever. This book is dedicated to my husband Jeremy and my two darling children, Katie and Rory, for their love, and being with me on the ride, and for giving me so much to write about! Thanks to Ralph Wessman from Walleah Press for publishing all three books, and for being a shining light for poets in Tassie and elsewhere – he’s a true literary gem. Thanks also to my talented friend Jen Lorrimar-Shanks who designed all three covers, with lots of toing and froing about the designs, and to my gang of friends who provided artistic opinion and input. For Incandescence, I have my lovely friend Pen Clark to thank for the gorgeous leaf photo that illuminates the cover. Esther here has been a trusty support and invaluable friend along both my poetry and parenting journeys, and I have her and my other main poetry mentor and supporter, Dr Gina Mercer, to thank for taking the time to edit, support and cheer on this collection.

It's actually been published since early January, but my life’s been pretty rocky earlier this year and I wanted to give it the launch it deserved, so it’s taken some time to get here. I’ve been on a bit of a roll with two books in two years but at this point, I don’t know if or when I will publish another book. It’s for all these reasons that I am so very grateful that you’ve come along today to celebrate the launch of Incandescence with me, I really appreciate it.

So now I might read you a handful of poems from the book, starting with one of the lighter ones.

Many of you might be able to think of a time when you set out on a long day walk or a multi-day bushwalk and after a certain number of hours – for me it’s usually about 5 hours of walking with a heavy pack on – you start to wonder why you thought such a plan would be fun and your mind wanders to all the other things you could be doing instead, which at the time all seem so much more enjoyable, and sensible. This poem contains some advice for you, at those times, take it or leave it, it’s up to you. (Advice for those who find themselves doing long bushwalks for some crazy reason they can’t remember)

Does anyone find that the harder their life is, the more likely they are to get the urge to share lovely photos of rosier moments on Facebook? There’s a strange phenomenon going on there. I don’t post much on Facebook anymore, and I’ve noticed not as many people do these days, but some years ago after sharing some of my poems about parenting with a fellow poet, she said she was surprised at the desperate tone and content of them because the photos I posted on Facebook gave a lovely, smiling, happy impression of our lives and she would never have guessed I was finding motherhood challenging. I laughed and then shared the following poem that I had written about the difference between a photo on Facebook and the actual experience. (Salmon ponds)

I spent the last 5 years running groups for people with mental health issues at The Hobart Clinic, and during that time I taught and practiced myself a lot of mindfulness and acceptance skills. This poem is grounded in some of those practices. (Ode to a Park Bench)

I wrote this sonnet when I was feeling nostalgic for all the little unnoticed milestones that pass by as our kids grow up – like the last time they need us to push them on the swings or the last time they need us to cut up their sausage for them. It was initially written as a response poem to one of Esther’s lovely parenting sonnets, Sonnet for Fifteen, in her beautiful and prize-winning collection “Intimate, low-voiced, delicate things”. (Sonnet for lost lasts)

I wrote this poem to record some memories of my Nanna Austin, and what she was like in her final years. It was inspired by a visit I made to her when Rory was a baby. (Still has the touch)

The last poem I’ll share with you today is a bit of a transition poem. For a long while it felt like all I was writing was shopping lists, questions to ask child health nurses or text messages asking my husband when he was coming home. Then I started to emerge from the chaotic early years and was able to write this: (Ready for more than nursery rhymes).  









Saturday, 2 August 2025

Winter Update: Incandescence, Workshops & Literary News

I’ve been preoccupied recently by other life roles and yet poetry always burns quietly in the background. I’m now thrilled to share a few updates with you.

Tasmanian Literary Awards 2025
It was a pleasure to attend the Tasmanian Literary Awards shortlist announcement event on 12 February this year. While Dancing with Empty Prams didn’t make the final shortlist, I was delighted that it was longlisted in the poetry category. A reader recently told me they’d read it three times and thought it was “a great novella about courage”—a reminder of why I write.

Congratulations to the four outstanding poets who were shortlisted: Anne Kellas, Pam Schindler, Kathryn Lomer and Sarah Day. Each of their collections brings a unique and powerful voice to the page. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend checking out the full list of shortlisted works and the winners—including the People’s Choice Awards—on the Tasmanian Literary Awards website.

Hobart LitFest
I was honoured to be a featured reader at this year’s Hobart LitFest, held at the Salamanca Arts Centre in Hobart on 4th April. The event brought together writers, readers and publishers in a celebration of Tasmanian literary talent. Thanks to everyone who came along and to the wonderful organisers for their support of local voices.

Wellways Poetry Workshops – August
In August, I’ll be running two poetry workshops with Wellways in the lead-up to Mental Health Week 2025:

·        In-person: Monday 11th August at Wellways Hobart, 10:30am-12:30pm

·        Online: Monday 25th August via Zoom from 1-3pm

These free, creative workshops are open to anyone with a lived experience of mental health challenges. We'll use poetry as a gentle way to explore resilience, imagination and voice.
👉 More details here and here

Book Launch: Incandescence
And finally—the big news! I’m thrilled to announce the launch of my new poetry collection, Incandescence, happening on:

📚 Sunday 31 August
📍 2:30pm at Fullers Bookshop, Hobart

Esther Ottaway will speak about my book and I will share some poems from it. Esther’s beautiful book Intimate, low-voiced, delicate things (Puncher & Wattmann) won first prize in the Poetry category and People’s Choice in the 2022 Tasmanian Literary Awards. Often powerfully bringing to light the experiences of women, Esther’s work is widely published nationally and internationally and it’s an honour for her to be launching my book. You’re warmly invited to come celebrate with us.

About the book:
Susan Austin's third collection of award-winning poetry shines with compassion, illuminating connections between ourselves, each other and the environment.

Praise for Incandescence:

"Austin's sure contemporary voice carries us with power and immediacy into experiences of parenthood, relationship, nature, and the stories of many. Poetic drama in the best sense, cutting to the bone of matters, often taking our breath away." Esther Ottaway  

"Here's a collection to relish. Images fresh as lime zest on your tongue. Words that zing with wit. Deft and delicious. Delighting all your senses. Sure to spark conversations various and piquant." Dr Gina Mercer

Incandescence is now available to buy at Fullers Bookshop and The Hobart Bookshop, along with my other two books. They are also available from many distributors online, but if you’re going to order online it’s even better for me if you order directly through my website. Copies will of course be available at the launch and I will gladly sign them for you.

Thanks, as always, for supporting poetry and for being part of this ongoing journey. I hope to see you at the launch or one of the upcoming workshops.

Warmly,
Susan



Friday, 20 December 2024

Longlisted for the Tasmanian Literary Awards

As the year draws to a close, I was excited to learn that 'Dancing with Empty Prams' has been longlisted in the Tasmanian Literary Awards, for the Tim Thorne Prize for Poetry. See details on all the longlisted books here. I am in such fabulous company, with many books on the longlist being favourites of mine. It's a special delight to be listed alongside Esther Ottaway's 'She Doesn't Seem Autistic' which I launched at several joint events in Hobart and online last year. 

I was also delighted with the cover of my upcoming book, 'Incandescence', being finalised, designed by my fabulous friend Jen Lorrimar-Shanks, and featuring a photo by another fabulous friend, Pen Clark. 


Since I last wrote, other news includes:
- A poem commended in the New Zealand International Poetry Competition
- A poem included in the beautiful Haiku Down Under Anthology A Sensory Journey

Queensland downpour
outdoor concertgoers
keep dancing

- A haiku selected for Echidna Tracks 14
- Two poems included in the beautiful Oystercatcher One Anthology (Five Islands Press), available here

Keep an eye out for news of the launch of my third book, 'Incandescence', early next year.

In the meantime I wish you all a safe, healthy and happy festive season, with hopefully plenty of time to relax with some good books.


 

Sunday, 23 June 2024

Incandescence will be coming to life!

I'm thrilled to announce that Walleah Press will be publishing my third book, Incandescence, later this year or early next. It's a 12-years-in-the-making poetry collection about people and all their wonderful, messy, painful and joyous complexities. The poems illuminate parenting, relationships, poverty, illness and ways we cope, like yoga, writing, nature connection.

Fifteen of the poems have been previously published across ten journals and anthologies. One poem from the manuscript won the FAW Tasmania Poetry Prize 2023 and a further four poems were commended in competitions.

In other news, my previous two books, Undertow and Dancing with Empty Prams, are now both available on Kindle as eBooks.

Undertow is only $8.99 and is available here and Dancing with Empty Prams is a bargain for $9.99 and available here.

Both books are still available through the link on my home page or via the tab "Buy my books". There's a secure PayPal function and I have plenty of stock I can pop in the mail to you. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I think nothing beats a paper copy of a book.

And just for a little taster, this poem will be in my third book, Incandescence. It was also included in the Anthology "The World According to Us" the 2023 Anthology by FAW Northwest Writers Tasmania.

 

Every olive counts

New Harbour, Tasmania

 

The wind flings my flatbread off my lap,

two olives land in the sand.

I am instructed to pick them up, wash them off.

 

The departing tide arranges

thousands of translucent blue bodies

and long, opaque tails on the sand.

A bluebottle invasion

shrivelling in the sun.

 

We skinny-dip in the creek’s

thwarted mouth.

Breaststroke around in the metre-deep fresh water

backed up behind the beach.

The top two centimetres, warmed by the sun.

Below that

very refreshing.

Paddle around, goose-bumped,

gazing at seagulls, eucalypts, clouds.

Drying off, we anticipate

a slightly less smelly night in the tent.

 

I am chastised

for snacking on lunch crackers

before bed.

 

This is the wild South-West.

Skies menace grey clouds,

cold wind whips into our bones

as we sit on the ground, puffed up

in down jackets, fleece beanies,

long pants and thick socks,

wondering where summer’s gone.

 

First day falling will also be in my new book and was previously published by Burrow.


First day falling

 

in this strange office

where half a tap offers boiling water and the other half chilled

 

she tries to smile and read name badges

with an imperceptible downward flick of her eyes

 

new colleagues bear gossip in their arms like kindling

she wants to light a fire to warm her nervous bones

 

instead she plies the levers on her chair

struggles for equilibrium

 

she logs in, opens her calendar – blank and questioning

slots pens and paperclips into a plastic caddy

 

slips away to the bathroom … scares herself in the mirror

with an expression like being lost in snow

 

or gazing into the sky at night to find God

but only managing to spot a falling star


Here is a poem from Undertow:

 

Veteran

 

The sunken couch cradles him.

He grips the remote

(friend).

 

The baby,

the pot plant,

her gloss lipstick

                         all study him.

 

Doctors riddle him with diagnoses

but it is war

that goes on interviewing him each night.

 

He asks alcohol to counsel him

but all each bottle does

is prescribe another.

 

And just to even it out, here are two poems from Dancing with Empty Prams:

 

Pudgy legs

 

Have you ever noticed

how many cute babies there are

in airports?

 

As we wait at our gate,

I watch the ones around me.

 

A toddler in the row facing me

wears a mock miniskirt

attached to a blue stripy top.

The outfit hovers above pudgy legs.

She stands, wobbling, on the seat,

grips the backrest,

gurgles back at the adoring adults.

 

On the plane

I chew envy-salted peanuts.

I even long to be

the parent

             wrestling

                              the screaming baby

                                                            up the back.

 

Smile formation

 

At the end of every day,

a needle.

 

Before bed –

the routine jabbing, stabbing.

 

It seems like half a year of needles

but it’s only been two months.

Seventeen per month.

 

Secret red pinpricks decorate

my belly, below my navel,

in a smile formation.

 

This is where a little extra fat is an advantage.

An indisputable excuse for Burger Rings.

 

Don't forget to follow me on Facebook!  Susan Austin Poet


Saturday, 16 March 2024

"'Dancing With Empty Prams' — A brave, raw and compelling poetic novel"

As my verse novel Dancing with Empty Prams makes its way out into the world, I have been touched by the feedback I have been receiving. One colleague, a mental health nurse, wrote to me saying: 

“I wasn’t sure how I would feel about a work about infertility. I am one of those people who has never wanted a child and always been relieved at the one-line reading. When friends have struggled with infertility, I’ve found it difficult to find the right responses and been very aware that I wasn’t as empathic as I would have liked so I hoped that the poetry might help me with that. And it did!

I bought both of your books and read them both cover to cover on that Saturday afternoon. You said that your book wouldn’t be a best-seller but I really can’t see why not, it was a genuine page-turner, I was completely engrossed. All of your poems reflect multi-faceted human experience, everything from despair to wry humour and nothing over simplified.

One of my best friends is trying to get pregnant for the second time after a long fertility journey with the first and I am so much better equipped to be a listening ear now. I’ll be giving her the book too as she will be excited (and validated) to find her experience reflected in verse.

You may also be pleased to know that I am now a convert to the verse novel form. I haven’t read a book from cover to cover for over a year. I thought my capacity had died with age but I’ll be ordering some poetry books now.”

A social worker friend wrote: “I read Dancing With Prams and loved it! It was very easy to read, especially with your engaging writing style. It's such a beautiful, tender, funny, heartbreaking exploration of a journey of infertility. I'm so glad you wrote it and you're sharing it with the world.”

I was thrilled to have two of my poems from the novel: “The intimacy of needles; the poise of liquid nitrogen” included in the Australian Poetry Anthology. This combined poem was also commended in the 2021 national Woorilla Poetry Prize and can be read below (you may need to click on it to enlarge).

 




Graham Matthews wrote a review of the book for Green Left Weekly in August 2023, available here and copied below. It’s great to have this book recognized by the staunchly feminist and environmentalist publication that I have a long association with.

'Dancing With Empty Prams' — A brave, raw and compelling poetic novel

"Dancing with Empty Prams is the second book published by Tasmanian-based poet and ecosocialist Susan Austin. It’s the fictionalised story of one woman’s struggle with fertility, the morality of having children and the desire to persist against numerous setbacks.

It’s a beautifully written book. It reads so easily, which I imagine means it took a lot of time to write, edit and rewrite. It’s written in a poetic form that greatly adds to the moment, depth and weight of the story. It’s brave, raw and compelling.

As a poetic novel, it’s possible to read Dancing with Empty Prams in a single session: in fact, I found it impossible to put the book down.

Although a fictionalised story, written about an imagined character, the detailed descriptions are personal; the sense of frustration, of invasion and depersonalisation, of hope and disappointment are very moving and intensely humane.

Austin has the courage to write about an experience that is so often suppressed.

“I can’t talk to my friends with kids just now. Even thinking about them makes me want to cry. They didn’t have any trouble conceiving. They try to understand but they can’t,” intones the lead character and narrator, Jade, a health food shop owner living in Queensland.

And again:

Bitter Disappointment hands me over to Hope
Steps me through some spirited salsa.
Anxiety takes over, stumbling with two left feet.
He leads me through some ungraceful pirouettes
before passing me back to Bitter Disappointment.

Austin has written a book with universal applicability. While we may not all wish to have children, we were all born; in many cases out of deep love and affection.

And as with many excellent books, it’s not just the story that keeps you hooked, it’s the wonderful way it’s told. I look forward to reading whatever book Austin puts together next."

Esther Ottaway and I both read at an event at Fullers Bookshop on the 10th August 2023, the fourth event in the Fullers Poets Series. We spoke on the theme Women’s Untold Stories and read from our new books. The audience was attentive and appreciative, with many nourishing conversations held afterwards. 





And lastly, a photo taken by Esther Ottaway outside Fullers Bookshop, with me holding my book, and of course, a pram. I have two more boxes of books on order so if you haven’t already got a copy, please consider placing an order through my website and I will send one to you, thank you.


Music and poetry - still an item? Also self-compassion, lemons and fishing

It’s about time for an update I think! It just takes a little dose of Covid to clear my diary and give me the time needed for things like this 😊

I started off the year by performing at the Cygnet Folk Festival, at the Poet’s Breakfast, and on a panel organised by TasWriters. Chaired masterfully by Danielle Wood, I spoke alongside fabulous local poets Gina Mercer, Anne Collins and Young Dawkins, with Tim Hodgkinson  playing double bass. The panel discussed the topic: 'Music and Poetry - Still an Item"?' and poets shared our thoughts and read some of our more musical works.



Photos thanks to Yvonne Gluyas

Last month I ran an Oasis Women’s Poetry Workshop on the theme of “Exploring connection and self-compassion through poetry.” We looked at Mary Oliver’s famous poem Wild Geese and explored how poetry exercises can help us mindfully notice our emotional states and manage our moods. I invited participants to write about their connections with special places, people or objects. Creative writing can have a powerful effect on our ability to understand and accept ourselves and I shared some exercises to enable us to view our characteristics and insecurities with self-compassion, based on the work of Dr Kristin Neff.

 “the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.”

-          Mary Oliver, from Wild Geese

 

In October I had my second haiku published in Echidna Tracks, the Australian Haiku online journal.


after four years  
                                                  
the first lemon


It’s a short, simple haiku, testament to less is often more. It was accompanied by a striking painting of a lemon by Ron Moss.

Also in October last year I won the FAW Tasmania 2023 Poetry Prize and was awarded Highly Commended. I hope to get this year’s winning poem published so I can share it with you. It's called A different kind of online and is about fishing, of all things! Inspired by many fishing trips with Dad when I was a kid.


I participated in a national ekphrastic competition judged by Chris Mansell. Andrew Bennett Ekphrastic Poems (30 pages A4) was subsequently published by WordXimage, September 2023. My poem (abridged below) was the second poem included in response to the painting “An Afternoon Adrift” by Andrew Bennett.  

 

Untethered

 

Malted rye toast

with a dash of olive oil

thinly sliced plums

on top.

 

Tea

solitude

doorframe

sun.

 

Sandals off

notebook ready

wrists relaxed.

 

Patience

words will come

like ants to crumbs.

 

I also came across a poem of mine called Veteran that a friend liked enough to include on her Resistance Words blog back in 2015. You can read it here.

In August last year I was interviewed by Arianne James for her Book Shelf program on Edge Radio. The recording was up online for a month but is now unavailable. We had a great chat about poetry and verse novels. Speaking of which, I'll do a separate post with Dancing with Empty Pram updates.

Thursday, 20 July 2023

Esther Ottaway launches Dancing with Empty Prams

 Here is Esther's lovely launch speech for Dancing with Empty Prams, recorded in Hobart in July 2023.