NCW Libraries

John Egan is a Sydney poet who also lives on the south coast of NSW. He was a high school teacher of English for twenty-two years and Second Master of Bankstown Grammar School for nine years. Later he taught English as a Foreign Language and University Preparation courses at the University of NSW, Wollongong University College and Newcastle University, as well as English and Business Communication at JDW Business College. He retired in 2013. His first...

Midnight Radio explores the complex landscape of intimate attachments, offering nuanced, original perspectives on the ambiguities that pervade them. The collection reflects a clear-eyed intelligence and a sensibility at once ironic and vulnerable. Often conversational in tone, satisfyingly varied, these compact yet multi-layered poems, deeply observed even at their most playful, engage both heart and mind. 'There is a hot black nerve running through...

In poems that are as concentrated as pearls, Patricia Sykes explores various histories-her own, those of her forebears, and the wider histories of identity and place. Citing the intersection of three distinct philosophies with particular birds-the indigenous modewarre, the colonial biziura lobata, and the common Wathaurong musk duck-these poems set out on the winding paths of memory and aspiration, searching for answers to the questions What is home?...

Ranging from satire to meditation to philosophy to the comic, Clara Joseph's second book of poetry, Dandelions for Bhabha, is an intense engagement with philosophers and literary/cultural theorists and their controversial positions. Her poems reflect on the postmodern condition when "The screaming begins at the wall / when one chick is taken" and "Universal Justice is dragged / to Auschwitz." The collection, divided into three sections, "Descartes'...

Winner, IP Rolling Picks 2013, Best Fiction! Drought. Heatwave. Environmental ruin… Do the answers lie in Controlled Waking State, CIQ Sinocorpa's newest stratagem to subdue a restless population? Yellowcake Summer concludes the exciting story begun in Yellowcake Springs.

Like travellers from fabled lands, voices come telling tales, sometimes shocking, sometimes familiar, sometimes magnetic, like echoes, like ultra soundings... Duncan Richardson's poetry can be fanciful like this but also grounded. A speaker softens the terror of his son observing a sabre-toothed tiger in a museum. Another hears a Siren urging him to jump from Victoria Falls. Join in his discovery of ghosts in everyday highrises...

'Ecce Homo!' His challenge echoes down the centuries, 'Behold the Man!' How will nine painters, each with their own particular style, culture, attitudes and ambitions relate to the challenge? However, they react, Ecce Homo will relate to each individually. A painter may accept, reject, try to avoid, or argue with Him. The reaction of a devout painter, like El Greco may be predictable, but how about an argumentative Michelangelo, or introspective Rembrandt;...

Once described by Andrew Sant as a 'great talent', Andrys Onsman writes from a migrant's perspective, both joyfully engaged and warily observant. His poetry, plays, essays and translations often focus on how relationships between people and ideas shape the way in which they construct their world. In this collection of poems, Andrys considers how we continually recreate our identities through our relationships with the people, places and ideas we love...

This is a comprehensive single-author anthological collection of the significant Australian contemporary poet Chirstopher (Kit) Kelen. It is also a bilingual anthology, presenting his work in both the original English, as well as in Romanian. Translated by the experienced prize-winning translators Daniel Ionita and Adriana Paul

When we listen, this land sings to us, holds us, and nurtures us. This land is the common ground that we share. This small blue planet is the common world of our existence. Desert Patterns is a collection of poetry that touches the membrane between two worlds with the breath of wildness and our inland journeys. In its striking imagery, we have a revelation of the significance of the land and of the burden of our Australian history.