BOOK LAUNCH

7pm Monday 22 March, Smith’s Alternative, Canberra
(Doors open 6:30pm)

Join us for the launch of two new Recent Work Press titles, part of the That Poetry Thing readings and the Poetic City Poetry Festival in Canberra:

Nightmares Run Like Mercury by Paul Collis.
Paul Collis’ first collection of poetry is a book of difficult truths and profound connections. It charts a life lived on the streets, on country, in the deep time of tradition, of relationships to land and family. This book mourns those who have passed, and the current state of places and people held close in the heart and in the kinds of knowledge inseparable from self that might be called ‘being’, but is always much more than that. It is also a poetry of hope in the hopeless, of beauty in small moments, and the overwhelming ‘now’ that is memory.

Rare Bird by James Lucas.
Intellectually ambitious and culturally engaged, these poems speak of Sartre, Zola and Jackson Pollock, of Western Australia’s firewatch trees and Dubbo’s gibbons, of the poet-batsman Stevie Smith, of youth and age. Ranging in form, James Lucas’s poems ask to be reread rather than assented to, and are written in the belief that poetry is both solvent and fresh lick of paint.

Open Mic: Limited to 10 poets reading for 3 mins each. Spaces can be reserved on the night, or pre-booked by emailing contact@recentworkpress.com.

Paul Collis

James Lucas