Warm yourself this winter with 4 new titles from Recent Work Press:
June
Erin Shiel Girl on a Corrugated Roof
Owen Bullock Pancakes for Neptune
July
KA Nelson Meaty Bones
Martin Dolan Off the Record
$79.80 $67.00
Warm yourself this winter with 4 new titles from Recent Work Press:
June
Erin Shiel Girl on a Corrugated Roof
Owen Bullock Pancakes for Neptune
July
KA Nelson Meaty Bones
Martin Dolan Untitled
In stock (can be backordered)
In this second collection from award-winning poet, K A Nelson, extends the themes in her 2018 debut collection, to write as desert flâneur or reminisce as the moon. In her concerns about the natural world she speaks directly to a kookaburra and pays homage to the riparian zone. In writing of loss, love and its antithesis, she employs wry humour or a sometimes-brutal response to aspects of contemporary Australian society that may startle readers or pose a question: how can we be better?
Get all fifteen of our new poetry collections released as they are released 2023
Featuring new work by:
April
Nathan Shepherson, Sandra Renew
May
Ally Chua, Alvin Pang & George Szirtes
June
Erin Shiel, Owen Bullock
July
K A Nelson, Martin Dolan
September
Es Foong, Brendan Ryan, Thabani Tshuma
October
Jennifer Allen, Brent Cantwell
November
Jen Webb, Kerry Greer
In this debut collection, Judith Wright Poetry Prize winner, K A Nelson surveys a life lived in inland Australia. Inlandia traces the inner self, recording discoveries as she feels the place out and comes to an understanding of what ‘place’ means. Nelson’s direct poetry makes us think again about what keeps us returning, physically and in memory, to the terrains and people who occupy our shared history.
Erin Shiel’s debut collection brings together insightful vignettes about the arc of maturity to womanhood, exploring kindness, grief and the neglected beauty of everyday life. The collection slips through multiple identities, interleaving ekphrasis with lyric and nature poems. The effect is a dynamic tension between fiction and truth, invention and autobiography. Many of the poems, imbued with nostalgia, reclaim the liminality of girlhood, as an opportunity to form identity. A ghost girl character appears guiding the reader through the sections of the collection, with poems related in turn to the themes of girlhood, identity, finding mettle and contemplating nature. With whimsy and playfulness, emotional insight and nuance, Girl on a Corrugated Roof uses empathy and the natural environment to draw art out of the gallery and into our everyday lives.
Get all fifteen of our new poetry collections released as they are released 2023
Featuring new work by:
April
Nathan Shepherson, Sandra Renew
May
Ally Chua, Alvin Pang & George Szirtes
June
Erin Shiel, Owen Bullock
July
K A Nelson, Martin Dolan
September
Es Foong, Brendan Ryan, Thabani Tshuma
October
Jennifer Allen, Brent Cantwell
November
Jen Webb, Kerry Greer
Utilising comprehensive research undertaken at the National Records of Scotland, On the Record takes as its starting point the death certificates of a number of Martin Dolan’s direct ancestors. Each poem imagines itself into the thoughts of its subject/speaker, developing a mosaic that gives a small sight of Scottish social history, primarily in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Get all fifteen of our new poetry collections released as they are released 2023
Featuring new work by:
April
Nathan Shepherson, Sandra Renew
May
Ally Chua, Alvin Pang & George Szirtes
June
Erin Shiel, Owen Bullock
July
K A Nelson, Martin Dolan
September
Es Foong, Brendan Ryan, Thabani Tshuma
October
Jennifer Allen, Brent Cantwell
November
Jen Webb, Kerry Greer
From the epic of Gilgamesh to the laws of thermodynamics, from Rimbaud in Paris to unheard voices of literature, Sleeping Dogs is a visceral and often acerbic collection marked by Martin Dolan’s taut, undeniable lines and precise, crystalline language.
..a more attractive approach – and a truer one – is for the poet to step away and let the moment be itself. In this way, his or her moment becomes our moment. The more particular it is, the more universal it becomes. This is Martin’s way. Things that could seem insignificant become imbued with substance, the small becomes momentous, whether it be a sparrow slamming into a glass window, a sunset on a daily jog, bees, dung beetles, letters, the cutting of a garden plant, dust, a greeting card, a road in the moonlight, words themselves or children engaged in trick-or-treat. Little things are not little things. His universe knows no hierarchy.
Beginning with a childhood in and around depressed Cornish mining, Pancakes for Neptune is a detonation of neoliberal waste. Bullock understands that conservatism – whether in public or private realms – is, by definition, a protection racket. However, this collection is not an angry one. It sparkles with a rich lyrical and imagist vein, stirring us to dwell on this earth in relationship with others, with respect, rapture and exuberant interest. Owen Bullock’s latest collection showcases his restless experimentalism as well as his sly, generous and quirky sense of fun.
Get all fifteen of our new poetry collections released as they are released 2023
Featuring new work by:
April
Nathan Shepherson, Sandra Renew
May
Ally Chua, Alvin Pang & George Szirtes
June
Erin Shiel, Owen Bullock
July
K A Nelson, Martin Dolan
September
Es Foong, Brendan Ryan, Thabani Tshuma
October
Jennifer Allen, Brent Cantwell
November
Jen Webb, Kerry Greer
These haiku were written over three summers, camping on our piece of land near Waihi in Aotearoa New Zealand, and, for contrast, one winter sojourn there in our newly-built gypsy wagon. The land is bordered by the Mataura stream—which means ‘red face’. We call the place ‘Land of the shining stream’ or ‘River’s edge’. The eels are named Brad and Angelina. One day, we’ll build a house there. In the meantime, we’re developing the land along permaculture principles, and noting moments both practical and transcendant.
In this new collection, Owen Bullock asks ‘what constitutes work for someone who must play in order to create?’ It’s a question addressed through formal contrast, aural unpredictability, and a genuine immersion of all the senses.
In Owen Bullock’s second haiku sequence with Recent Work Press, he explores the wisdom garnered from his period as a care worker for the elderly in New Zealand. These haiku display the riches of Bullock’s keen sense of observation married with his ability to get to the essence of any subject with his deft use of this most precise of Japanese forms.
Owen Bullock shows that haiku is a form that can deliver us worlds with deft subtlety and cutting precision. Each of these poems builds on the last to deliver a strong sense of place and of people. Urban Haiku has an eye for the absurdities of contemporary life, as well as its quieter, less noticed moments.
Warm yourself this winter with 4 new titles from Recent Work Press:
June
Erin Shiel Girl on a Corrugated Roof
Owen Bullock Pancakes for Neptune
July
KA Nelson Meaty Bones
Martin Dolan Off the Record