Ruby Street

So, my next book is scheduled to appear from Five Islands Press some time next year (2017), most likely mid-year. First of all, my thanks to the editorial team at Five Islands for inviting me to publish with them. It was, actually, a surprise, a welcome one of course. It's not the first time I've published with Five Islands. My second book, the now out-of-print Flagging Down Time , came out during the Press's Wollongong-Ron Pretty years in the 90s. Nice to be back in the catalogue. The book, currently titled Brink , will contain poems I've written over a number of years. In fact, in the draft I'm finalising, there are poems published over a decade ago and even a couple whose first drafts happened in the late 1990s, though they have been through many edits since then. One poem consists solely of words and phrases mined from my first and now also out-of-print book, The Mask and the Jagged Star . Brink is, thus, an accumulative book, though there will be fairly re...

My next book, now it’s public, will be called Brink (unless there is a last-minute title change, always possible in publishing). Now that it’s more or less settled, I am of course working on writing ideas beyond that – ideas that are more than a poem here and there. Needless to say, this includes a ‘next next’ book, the one after this next book, as an idea.   I realise, of course, that in poetry publishing there’s never a ‘next book’ until it’s signed, sealed and delivered, but the idea of ‘next’ is a focus for activity, as well as a goad, and a reminder that there may be a place for a few things to land together. It may never happen, I may not make it (that gets more clear as you get older), and the-world-as-I-know-it may not make it (that’s pretty clear right now), but you never know your luck. Brink , I suspect, will be seen as broadly ‘ecopoetic’ (more on that soon) – anyway, I’ll bet at least one review (should I get any reviews but, hey, you never know your luck) will me...