Salt River is a personal journey that explores themes pertinent to women negotiating the midlife experience: ageing, healing, motherhood, regeneration. The poems are reflected through the lens of the Australian outback.
A collection of poems that observes and records day-to-day life, and our interaction within nature and the universe. These poems of loss, grief, love, laughter, and hope are infused with small discoveries and moments of awareness around the human condition and the meaning of our existence.
A collection of poems by historical figures Judith Wright, Mabel Forrest and Raymond Curtis; contemporary poets Jena Woodhouse, Vanessa Page, Jane Frank, Stephanie Green and Brett Dionysius; and contributions from Wangerriburra Elder Aunty Ruby Sims and Janette Turner Hospital.
The poems in this collection take on the metaphor of Kintsukuroi. This ceramic art of ‘golden mending’ is a starting point to consider how the repaired fractures of human experience might leave us stronger, or still fragile, yet even more precious than before.
“Poets are always unreliable narrators, of their own actions and inactions, most of all. Jane understands this. Her poems have an artist’s sensibility – they are pictures hung in a gallery, each of them depicting a different style, a different image, a different form – each bringing to the page different baggage and drawing from a different legacy.”
– Damen O’Brien, launch speech, Rochford Street Review
Queensland has witnessed five great extinction events over its 1.9 billion years existence. “Critical State” looks at the current impact of climate change, and the human impact on animal and plant species, and even ourselves, across the varied Queensland landscapes.
“Drawing on the deepest resources of antipodean poetics, [Cooke’s work] hymns the created world in all its prodigious diversity. It is funny, reverent, full of curious facts, and crazily ambitious.”
– J.M. Coetzee on Cooke’s previous collection Lyre
Botanical Skin brings together poems that span relationships, universal and domestic themes, travel, landscape, wildflowers, and profound moments of existence.
“There is a seamless quality underpinning her poetry, making the reading of it an effortless and thoroughly enjoyable experience.”
– Denise O’Hagan, Rochford Street Review
“Replete with delightfully original imagery, Lawrence’s poetry feels at once fresh and familiar, as if an old friend were spinning a yarn that you had not heard before.”
– Alison Clifton, Stylus Lit
“Woodhouse finds a place among such poets as Judith Wright and Mary Oliver, renowned for immortalising earth, nature and species in their poems.”
– Angela Costi, Rochford Street Review
“Raymond’s poetry is a precious evocation of what it is to have lived in a green world, to have loved it and watched it change, and to have expressed all that experience masterfully in words.”
– Meredith McKinney, Introduction to The View Westward
Calanthe Press is a not-for-profit independent publisher. It operates as part of Calanthe Collective Inc, an incorporated association that promotes poetry and operates under the name Calanthe Poetry. Calanthe Press is based on Tamborine Mountain in South East Queensland. Modest profits are re-invested in future publications.
