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About the author
With a handful of exceptions, the poems in this anthology are drawn from material that we received in response to our call for submissions in April 2024. This was the first call for submissions made by 5 Islands Press under its new management, and it attracted an overwhelming response. We were forced to disappoint many fine poets whose work deserves to be read. Oystercatcher One was conceived as a way of allowing us to publish more of it.
About the book
This collection reflects the vitality and diversity of contemporary Australian poetry. The 101 poems it contains range from the witty and irreverent to the sublime. There are poems that deal with internal struggles and private pain, and poems that look outward to environmental, political and social challenges; poems of joy, poems of suffering and poems of moments of quiet satisfaction; poems of tenderness and affection, and poems of anger; poems of youth and poems of age; poems that celebrate the beauty of the natural world, and poems that navigate the streets of our cities.
There is no theme to this collection. What binds it together is the poets’ belief that through poetry we can come to experience more deeply our lives and those of others, and the world we inhabit; and through poetry we can communicate that experience more truthfully.
Night brings a little light rain on the roof
The sound of angels dancing.
LYNDON WALKER— “Angels in the Afternoon”
… they flew out
their bodies like bees
from a flower
EARL LIVINGS—“Bees Dance”
…I folded like a tiny page,
Into the book of my tent,
And slept beneath a library of stars.
TIM EDWARDS—"Blowholes—Carnarvon”
I took myself to the sea.
ELIZABETH LEWIS—“Brine & Buoyant”
High velocity invective
from a machine gun mouth
kicks the groin of our Sunday morning calm.
ROBYN LANCE—“Cardboard Comfort”
A slow light …
… primes the udders of the waiting cows
GENEVIEVE OSBORNE—“Coast Dawn”
have you ever woken in the night
in somebody’s arms
and felt afraid
PENNI RUSSON—“Dear Amanda and Debbie”