‘While the writing of poetry may mean “reclaiming unhinged mode to bust…task paralysis”, the poetry here reminds us that there is, after all, in this world, an assuring sobriety and intelligence, alongside the effervescing “departmental Kool Aid”.’

Read an excerpt from the acclaimed Australian cartoonist’s highly anticipated follow-up to her Stella-shortlisted graphic novel, Stone Fruit.

‘I wanted with Cannon to explore a second coming-of-age: where needs and priorities have shifted into something more urgent and practical, but those shared identities still loom present, with all the precious and complicated intimacy that accompanies them.’

‘In my poetry, I have always tried to impart a sense of reverence for the natural world, to pay deep attention to it… to use language as a mechanism for wonder, joy and revelation.’

‘The judges chose John Berger and Me for the debut award for its originality and clever, non-linear but accessible structure. The quality of Nikos Papastergiadis’s perceptive, lyrical, subtly humorous prose also shone among a highly competitive field.’

‘I plod along seeking content / that I don’t share because / I’m well able to perform / to an audience of one’ 

In July 2025, Grace Yee celebrated the launch of her second collection Joss: A History. Read transcripts of launch speeches by Nadia Rhook, Alison Wong and Yee herself.

‘51 Alterities is what remains of my lyric voice and what remains for me of poetry as it competes for valency in our increasingly amped up era of tech broligarchy.’

‘Nikos Papastergiadis, the son of immigrants from a Greek peasant village, offers a warm tribute to his mentor in John Berger and Me.’

‘What can return look like, not just to a place, or a life interrupted, but to a self? What Kept You? is, in many ways, a series of responses to that question. Each chapter could be read as an answer to a different dimension of what keeps us away, or stands between us and the path home.’

‘rock flight is an extended poetic negotiation with certainty: the certainty of colonial violence, of dispossession, of the forces that degrade home and homeland, and of the suffering to self and family and collective identity that comes of these modern conditions. rock flight also performs the certainty of witnessing, of testimony, of the bonds of family and memory.’

‘Castro has crafted a fine and profound novel. Abe does not always find language consoling, but the lyric beauty of Chinese Postman, its restless wisdom and bitter comedy, bestow a rare gift on readers.’

Opening to submissions on 15 July, the Poetry in Translation Prize is open to living poets from around the world, writing in any language other than English.

‘Things happen in the stories, but they are less plot-driven than shaped by a pleasure in plottiness, a sense that what happens is less important than the wild processes through which what happens is mediated, represented, remembered, repressed. In this sense, my feeling is that a reader is finally left with something of a narrative theory, but a theory of the best kind: immanent in each sentence, full of life and mystery and possibility.’

‘all they want to do is sip cold-brew mochaccinos, / talk about coloured girls through a wall of built-in bookshelves, / and move to new zealand for a better life.’

The judges commended the ‘evocative and very elegant design’; the ‘uniformity across the series’; and ‘the quotes on the back.’ The six-book poetry series includes works by Kate Fagan, Judith Beveridge, Hasib Hourani, Suneeta Peres da Costa, Šime Knežević and Grace Yee.