We are delighted to announce that Robyn Rowland has signed with 5 Islands Press for her forthcoming book, Steep Curve. Robyn has previously published 6 previous books with 5 Islands Press, and is a former editor of the Press, but her last 3 books were published in Ireland and Turkey. So this is a homecoming. Welcome back, Robyn.
Robyn's new book is a book of final father poems. Returning to Australia from Ireland, December 2019, the poet sees her active, independent father, almost 100, beginning to age. The two, initially uncertain what’s happening, live together two and a half years, and during covid lockdown. They share the poet’s childhood home, which her father built 65 years before. Her sole caring grows their relationship through physical and emotional challenges, anger, frustration, loss and love. Drawn together in an intimacy few daughters or fathers experience, comfort for the poet lies in a practice she develops of observing daily ‘one lovely thing’.
If you want a foretaste of what you are in for, read Robyn's fine poem, Dismantling, one of the two poems by Robyn that were highly commended in the 2023 ACU Prize for Poetry competition. You can download a copy from the ACU Prize website (just click the button below).