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Melanie Jansen and Steve Meyrick @ Readings
Dr Melanie Jansen is a paediatric intensive care specialist, and her powerful poems explore the emotional landscape of this demanding but rewarding work, as well as the challenges and joys of the private life that must be lived alongside her professional one. Steve Meyrick's wide-ranging and deeply reflective collection provides the perfect foil. Why not join us when they read from and discuss these two quite different books, and find surprising touchpoints that connect them,
3 days ago
Reading in the City (your place of first resort)
On 15 May, join us at Westwords for the Parramatta launch of Elizabeth Walton’s How to Read a City: Your Place of Last Resort. Elizabeth is an emerging literary writer and cross-disciplinary artist and performer. Elizabeth will read from and discuss her book with celebrated author, Suzanne Leal, providing a glimpse into its ideas, writing process, and themes. This will be followed by with readings from two more 5 Islands poets, Hemat Malak and Kai Jensen, followed by an open
6 days ago
Booranga Bonanza
5 Islands Press authors Kai Jensen and Elizabeth Walton will be the featured poets at the monthly Booranga Writers Centre poetry reading on Friday 17 April. Elizabeth's book, How to Read a City, is hot from the press, published just last month. Victorian poet Dani Netherclift has called her book “a call to urgent action” that is “also a love letter for what is still present, precious and possible”. Kai Jensen's book, The Zebra Path of Tree Light , was published last year. Th
Apr 12
A Gray Day Out
By a very happy coincidence, Australian Book Review chose to publish Mark Tredinnick's excellent essay on Robert Gray in the same week as 5 Islands Press opened submissions the 2026 Robert Gray Prize for poetry. Mark, as some of you will know, knew Robert Gray well, and was a great admirer and promoter of his work. Last year, he conceived, coordinated and edited Bright Crockery Days —a festschrift in Gray's honour. Twenty-four literary luminaries each contributed an essay on
The Ease of Eggs: Nourishment for the Soul
This week, we celebrate the arrival of Benjamin Dodd's third poetry collection, The Ease of Eggs . The world Dodds witnesses and recalls in these tidy, playful lyric poems has a dignity and courtesy and unexpected kindness. And what a various, surprising and surprisingly tender world it is. As Carol Jenkins has written: "This book ... is a cabinet of the eclectic: school observations, the universe at large, men and gender, cinematic culture, science at work. But always we a
Definitely A Woman We Should Listen To
A Woman Talks to Her Tongue speaks of a family, its secrets and silences, unacknowledged griefs and inherited traumas. Written from the point of view of the fifth child in a complex family, the early poems catch and release a few moments in a daughter’s life, from her early childhood to parenthood. The second section of the book is a kind and passionate cry for truth-telling, femininity and creativity, and includes a series of remarkable monologues that examine silence and b
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