This collection is a suite of 28 poems inspired by popular songs from the 1880s through to 1980. Inspiration for the poems include 60's & 70's top 40 songs like My Old Man's a Groovy Old Man, music hall songs like Good Bye Melbourne Town, or a rousing war time morale-booster, A Brown Slouch Hat. Each of the poems is meant to be a 'take' on the song, many are mini monologues spoken in the first person, though not by the author. I hope all of them stand on their own, though I almost always hear the song being launched into the moment the poem based on it has finished being read.

Michael Farrell's new collection is a 'a raid on the inarticulate'—it liberates energies which exist within language, though they may not easily be spoken, or spoken about. The poems are composed through sampling & remixing, repetition & substitution, permutation & chance. This gives them a formal quality, so that one can think of them as concept-poems, songs for the page so the poetry gestures towards secret & codified significance while carrying an emotional intensity that will resonate with readers.

The poems in novelist and poet Anthony Lawrence's new volume Bark explore aspects of the Australian landscape, capturing the harshness of rural life. They also meditate on the minute and beautiful details of native birds, fish and animals. The poems are often narrative with a rich lyrical vein and reveal a fascination with figurative language and the process of creating a poem. Many of the poems featured in Bark have been published in distinguished journals.

Martin Harrison is a writer whose poetry is both a meditation and a meeting place between the immensity of the Australian environment and the hi-tech urbane world of everyday Western life. In this new collection Harrison has gathered together some of his best works and included some alluring and lyrical new works.