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# Flying Islands Pocket Poets

Change, one poem at a time.

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## Posts

- [Kit Kelen's 'Up Through the Branches'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/kit-kelens-up-through-the-branches/) - Kit Kelen's 'Up Through the Branches' from Up Through the Branches of bright birds, dull of leaves caught light with sunshine sown a welcoming – of wind, of cloud, of constellation as from the vast of daysit isn’t the eye alone to see, to steady with the skythey stand tattooed, leaf shone exalt a puzzle
- [Gail Hennessy's 'In a Second-hand Bookshop'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/gail-hennessys-in-a-second-hand-bookshop/) - Gail Hennessy's 'In a Second-hand Bookshop' from Written On Water I am with Virginia Woolf’s‘variegated feathers’ searchingamong wild, homeless books…old friends cheek by jowlnestle from floor to ceilingI am searching forAbelard’s Letters to Heloise.A young man tutors a scarfedwoman at a paper strewn tablethey are darkly exoticfrom old Persia perhapsI think of Scheherazadeflying carpets, Arabian
- [S. K. Kelen's 'Coming Home (from my Papuan holiday)'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/s-k-kelens-coming-home-from-my-papuan-holiday/) - S. K. Kelen's 'Coming Home (from my Papuan holiday)' from Yonder Blue Wild Goodbye Moresby.Goodbye jungle.Flying home. Over the phosphorescent green reefwhere the wing of a Japanese transport planestands like a broken soldier.Across a jade desert that joins the sky.Over the mountains that were really clouds.At thirty-thousand feet: when clouds look likethey’re just on top
- [Kit Kelen's 'A Sociology of Paradise'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/kit-kelens-a-sociology-of-paradise/) - Kit Kelen's 'A Sociology of Paradise' from a pocket kit 2 First I came through a hoop of flesh.I didn’t jump, I swam. There was an endlessmud plain and another storm coming.Rain beat the rice shoots green from the soil.Millions were huddled round the still ether.The century dragged on. I missed the boatswam out to
- [Richard James Allen's 'Birthplace'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/richard-james-allens-birthplace/) - Richard James Allen's 'Birthplace' from Fixing the Broken Nightingale someone in your family once read my novelor maybe studied it at schoolI found an old copyan early Penguin editiondown behind the back row of booksat the bottom of your bookcasethe front cover was ripped ofbut I could tell they had appreciated itbecause the title was
- [Beth Spencer's 'We Are the Rejected'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/beth-spencers-we-are-the-rejected/) - Beth Spencer's 'We Are the Rejected' from The Party of Life The rejected in love come down to sigh in the park at Glebe PointThe rejected drive down late at nightcrammed in a yellow two door sedanradio blaring, arms flailing out of windowshair a mess, mascara runningWe shout 'We are the REJECTED!'across Blackwattle Bayand waitand
- [Jean Kent's 'IN MY MOTHER’S HOUSE'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/jean-kents-in-my-mothers-house/) - Jean Kent's 'IN MY MOTHER’S HOUSE' from The Language of Light My nieces and nephews are chasing me up the wall. In my mother’s house they are musteredyear by year, just as I was: A.J.C. 30/8/63 (five foot two) pencil brands in paint. Heels tight against the floor ankles strained careless as shanghais they aim
- [Kit Kelen's 'The Sociology of Paradise'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/kit-kelens-the-sociology-of-paradise/) - Kit Kelen's 'The Sociology of Paradise' from A Pocket Kit First I came through a hoop of flesh.I didn’t jump I swam.There was an endless mud plainand another storm coming.Rain beat the rice shootsgreen out of the soil.Millions were huddledround the still ether. The century dragged on.I missed the boat, swam outto the island. And
- [Anna Couani's 'Small Wonders'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/anna-couanis-small-wonders/) - Anna Couani's 'Small Wonders' from Small Wonders growing up in Australiaturn the corner at the pubpass the drinkers sittingin the north morning sunlike a chorusconstantly watchingthe bearded lady sitting outsideThe Skull’s househelping out on the weekendselling the bicycles he repairsthe Israeli bag sellers in the markethearing Hebrew as you passwith the occasional English word“Wednesday” for
- [Greg McLaren's 'A House'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/greg-mclarens-a-house/) - Greg McLaren's 'A House' from After Han Shan I see a darkness above the houses,above the light at their windowscatching in the eaves.We are driving awayin your old car, its rattling doorletting the cold in.The night is a wide space,entering everything.You stop, we crunch on gravelby the side of a road,looking back at the soft
- [Rae Desmond Jones' 'Decline and Fall'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/rae-desmond-jones-decline-and-fall-2/) - Rae Desmond Jones' 'Decline and Fall' from Decline and Fall i hate themthe truth is out! & they hate me. them, the barbarians in baseball hats,twisting in chairs lined up in artificial order,and carving their loathing on the tabletops. do you know why the roman empire fell? i ask.who cares? a boy giggles.that is the
- [Philip Hammial's 'Getting Clean'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/philip-hammials-getting-clean/) - Philip Hammial's 'Getting Clean' from The Beast Should Comply Filthy because first, I fell from a familyof fifty. No explanation save Fusion, that it fedthe lilies with death until timebecame thin, brittle, expired in a long, patheticstouche. Stouche: run aground — blue canoes (whyblue? — as an antidote to the narrator’s filth) are picked upby
- [Lizz Murphy's 'The Woman in Blue'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/lizz-murphys-the-woman-in-blue/) - Lizz Murphy's 'The Woman in Blue' from Bitumen Psalms the woman in blueall weatherswalkslike it’s killing herponchoed walkerorange flame spirallingthrough long grassshe blows a trail of smokegently taps her ciggiethey keep her companyash flakes floatthe blushing moonher cigarette burns
- [Natalie Cooke's 'Bird Song'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/natalie-cookes-bird-song/) - Natalie Cooke's 'Bird Song' from 100 Poets Last year I began a list of birds at my windowrecording their whims and peregrinations, and my own imperfect knowledge (and lack of application).Currawong, it starts boldly, cuckoo-shrike, wattlebirdbefore some sort of thornbills (?) – all brown…Perhaps they’ll return.I dug out a field guide, dived into descriptors, compared
- [Three haiku from Myron Lysenko’s flying islands pocketbook "a ghost gum leans over"](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/three-haiku-from-myron-lysenkos-flying-islands-pocketbook-a-ghost-gum-leans-over/) - summer holiday we pitch a tent in your nan’s front yard an argument on the northerly wind our pitched tent overcast evening I hide her car keys in my underwear
- ['I want' by Angie Contini](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/i-want-by-angie-contini/) - theatre to be thinking and thought to be music and love to be work
- [A YEAR OF NON-STOP POETRY MAKING  ](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/year-of-nonstop-poetry-professor-kit-kelens-one-year-flying-islands-poetry-manuscript-workshop/) - A YEAR OF NON-STOP POETRY MAKING Professor Kit Kelen’s One Year Flying Islands Poetry Manuscript Workshop running from January to December 2026 minimum of six participants maximum of twelve participants $500 flat fee (GST free) (possibility of a scholarship for a poet of demonstrably limited means, letters of support may be provided for successful applicants
- [from Tug Dumbly’s "Son Songs"](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/from-tug-dumblys-son-songs/) - Three Degrees of Okay Old farm sheds perfect parallelograms leaning aslant in a frozen dance with the wind. Evening clouds a slow salmon as you breathe through the gills of the sky. How easy it is for things to go right to let slip the weight of expectation duck the pendulum of pessimism let it
- [By the Wayside](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/belief-by-les-wicks/) - By the Wayside from Belief by Les Wicks Over the drinks Alise started discussing “us veterans” as though we had conquered something real. There were enough stories that day, our backs bent, the calcium dust we shed as we struggle on towards dotage. There’s a form of war universally fought against the years. She had
- [from Dominique Hecq and Béatrice Machet’s "Crypto"](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/from-dominique-hecq-and-beatrice-machets-crypto/) - Virtu L ce qui ne se voit pas n’existe pas objet toi Le plus visible Le plus accessible Le plus vite possible hopLa! tout entier dans son image comme Narcisse sans reste aucun mirez-moi ca transparence absolue transparence tue Virtu L which is not seen doesn’t exist object you the most visibLe the most accessibLe
- [KA Rees — Come the Bones](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/ka-rees-come-the-bones/) - KA Rees writes poetry and short fiction. Her poems and short stories have been included by Australian Poetry, Cordite Poetry Review, Kill Your Darlings' New Australian Fiction anthology, Margaret River Press, Overland, Review of Australian Fiction, Spineless Wonders and Yalobusha Review, among others. Kate was shortlisted for the 2016 Judith Wright Poetry Award, she was the recipient of the 2017 Barry Hannah Prize
- [Béatrice Machet](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/beatrice-machet/) - Béatrice (Anne-Marie, Marie-Jeanne) Machet is a French born poet, living between France and the USA, whose dance lessons as a child influenced and still influence her writing. As a teen she learned a lot from the Native American point of view about Native American history and Native cultures, until she felt impregnated with them. After
- [Jan Dean](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/jan-dean/) - Jan Dean is a Hunter Region poet. She won the 2018 Newcastle Writers Festival joanne burns Microlit Award for her prose poem ‘Fish Flops and Flaps’ published in Shuffle by Spineless Wonders. She was awarded the Seniors’ Prize sponsored by Baytree by Ardency at the 2019 Lane Cove Literary Awards with ‘Moss Poem’. Her work
- [Donations to Flying Islands Poetry Community Gift Fund are Tax Deductible](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/donations-to-flying-islands-poetry-community-gift-fund-are-tax-deductible/) - We are happy to announce that donations to the Flying Islands Poetry Community Gift Fund are now tax deductible. This was following a successful application to the Australian Taxation Office for Deductible Gift Recipient (DGR) Endorsement The Flying Islands Poetry Community Gift Fund is a separately administered fund within Flying Islands Poetry Community Inc. Funds
- [Odveig Klyve's The Farmer's Pear Tree](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/odveig-klyves-the-farmers-pear-tree/) - Odveig Klyve's The Farmer's Pear Tree from Let’s Take the Blue Sky by Storm the farmerlooks at the pear tree outside the windowthe old tree that spring after spring welcomes birds they return resting their wings after millions of miles they build nests and singabout what they have seen the forests of steel and concrete
- [Richard Tipping's 'Lord Muck'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/richard-tippings-lord-muck/) - Richard Tipping's 'Lord Muck' from Instant History Picturing EnglandHeadlands in a fattening breezeThe fragrant countryIts dark wet soil.This pot boiled over long agoOozing migrantsThreading identitiesBicycle couriers urgent as bells.Rough winds shock blossompetals heap pink snowSwirl up in gusts black taxiSmut to the gutter press.The history winners get written byWar’s cut bloodlines of beforeLord Muck must
- [Cui Yuwei's 'Junkman'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/cui-yuweis-junkman/) - Cui Yuwei's 'Junkman' from Fish Bones half-naked, trawls through garbageevery day in the neighbourhoodthe last items I seehim take home after sunsetare two scraps of gold armourthe sun has forged on his shoulders
- [Chrysogonus Siddha Malilang's 'first night in Macao'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/chrysogonus-siddha-malilangs-first-night-in-macao/) - Chrysogonus Siddha Malilang's 'first night in Macao' from Encounters: Never Random after five hours of floatingin the air or a hundred yearssince the sailing a great escape my great grandfather did this place he transited now I’ll call it homehe could neverreturnin fleshhis bloodthat flows in menow here afoothe used to walk or maybe runwhose
- [Rob Schackne's 'Stari Most'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/rob-schacknes-stari-most/) - Rob Schackne's 'Stari Most' from A Chance of Seasons In Southern Bosniawhere I first knew youwhere there was so much deaththere was a beautiful bridgeyou can’t kill memorywhere there is a beautiful bridgethis is a story about Mostara story about Stari Mostbut no, it’s a story about usand the fight we hadon the beautiful bridgeand
- [Iris Fan Xing's 'Smog'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/iris-fan-xings-smog/) - Iris Fan Xing's 'Smog' from South of Words when street lights are smudgedwhen high-rises lose their gridswhen the city submits to abstractionon a red alarm night on an east-bound trainsilence behind maskswarning ring in the ears smog herds us homeit was in early summer when I last saw you around Travessa da Paixãoyou told me
- [Myron Lysenko's 'in the light'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/myron-lysenkos-in-the-light/) - Myron Lysenko's 'in the light' from a ghost gum leans over: haiku and senryu missing teeththe comb alsomissing teethopen mindbut my noseis fullspear lilyboys chase each otheraround the lakespotted gumthe small girl hidesbehind a swanthe moorhensteps out of the shadowof a childstumbling towardmy 60th birthdaycool changeweekly visitsI enjoy being a sonagainaged care...a few brown leaves
- [Toby Fitch's 'Pinned Weeks'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/toby-fitchs-pinned-weeks/) - Toby Fitch's 'Pinned Weeks' from ILL LIT POP absence touches me in ways i couldn’t predictyour body feels nice against minefilled w/ secretsis that bag smiling?the heart’s an emotional organ mineconsumed 15 donuts today all jellywhen did you get so tense? there’s nothingquite like urinatingout in the open air there’s alwaysgod i love this music
- [Kit Kelen's 'sometimes'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/kit-kelens-sometimes/) - Kit Kelen's 'sometimes' from wake to play poems in first philosophy sometimes a mountainwill have its one little cloudgrey as water fallingjust thereneither here norhigh hover of all day hungas if grazingalthough at this heightthe grass is goneno matterin another worldit’s a feather fallenfor windlickwisp of weathersmallso thick sometimesyou won’t see throughlike a little fleece
- [Michael Crane's 'The great conspiracy'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/michael-cranes-the-great-conspiracy/) - Michael Crane's 'The great conspiracy' from Poems from the 29th floor Sitting on a tram,watching a groupof tough young people,I notice one of the girlshas a huge hickeyon her neck. I’m sorrybut that is hilarious.Now I’m convincedthat the world is conspiringagainst me being a serious writerand any minute nowthere will be a giantbanana cream pie
- [Clark Gormley's 'Hanging in the Hammock'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/clark-gormleys-hanging-in-the-hammock/) - Clark Gormley's 'Hanging in the Hammock' from Not What You Think When something’s the mattershe hangs in her hammockand sways the sad days away.She gives in to gravitylying there passivelyletting the levitycarry herhaunting andtraumaticthoughts to thesky.The swaying brings a stillnessthat relieves her illnesseseven if just for a while.Her mind is unclutteredand pacified graduallythinking howvery aptit
- [Geoff Page's 'Dispatch Ramornie 1842'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/geoff-pages-dispatch-ramornie-1842/) - Geoff Page's 'Dispatch Ramornie 1842' from Codicil Having received from several sidesdivers accounts of savage crimescommitted on the Clarence Riverby native Aborigineesand the scattering of cattlewith numerous other depredationsmost notably the robbery ofa shepherd’s hut on Ramornie stationa party of settlers suitably armedwas raised up by my constableand under my express commandentrapped an evening camp
- [Steve Armstrog's 'Meeting with the Morning Walking'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/steve-armstrogs-meeting-with-the-morning-walking/) - Steve Armstrong's 'Meeting with the Morning Walking' from What’s Left The sky,this morning’s brilliant blue,asks, “So, do you love me now?”“Yes” I reply, “and never morethan this moment.”The pavement under my feet is worn.It speaks of passageand of autumn leaves that stain its pores.I say to this ground“I’m thankful for all you’ve seenand how you’ve
- [Matt Turner's 'Marriage'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/matt-turners-marriage/) - Matt Turner's 'Marriage' from WAVE 9: COLLAGES speechI am toldby others*the name oflifebelief ina name*you old cock*the daythe pastamplifyingthe fashionthe sort of ruefulsmilenot to say*hoistingthe boyat noon, inthe city, upthe time for anygoing ofmay, remember atif found itis aida picturewhy may come*in amusclea plainslowa lighterthan any of uslove*is morehow toeh, the foola, a bitluxe, luxuriantage
- [Ross Donlon's 'Lookout'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/ross-donlons-lookout/) - Ross Donlon's 'Lookout' from The Bread Horse Morninglooks in as you look upover the edge and outFerny tree topsoffer frondssoft enough to land onJust the floating fenceand your limb’s tinglestops you takingone last glassof champagne airand swimmingthrough filmy currentscascading leavesand cobweb mistWater fallingis the only soundof breathingA matchbox cable carslides up one slipsout of sightA
- [KA Rees' 'Liber Abaci'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/ka-rees-liber-abaci/) - KA Rees' 'Liber Abaci' from Come the Bones The moon spillsover the ocean;the surface ripples—glass eels swimming.Driftwood sweeps on the curlof a wave and the nautiluswith its air-filled chambersfloats in the pelagic.Leaves fall from trees,they spiral and twiston the swirling breeze:a peacock opens to the sky.Stormbirds search unsuspectingnests, their hell-eyes homingin—the lights of a 747wing-tips
- [Richard James Allen's 'The Book of Bad Dreams'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/richard-james-allens-the-book-of-bad-dreams/) - Richard James Allen's 'The Book of Bad Dreams' from Text Messages from the Universe (1) You. You think you know who I am talking to. Youthink it must be you. You who knows who you are.You who will know what to do. You who will havethe appropriate response. You who will handle thesituation, whatever it
- [Vaughan Rapatahana's 'te taiao o Aotearoa'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/vaughan-rapatahanas-te-taiao-o-aotearoa/) - Vaughan Rapatahana's 'te taiao o Aotearoa' From te pāhikahikatanga ko taku whenua tēneiko taku rangi hokiko taku manuko taku roheko taku kāingako taku awako taku rotoko taku kai moanako taku maungako taku ngahereko taku karareheko taku tūrangawaewaeko taku wairuako taku manawako ahau tēnei whenua.he aha tāu kōrero, taku hoa?[New Zealand environmentthis is my landmy sky
- [Jill McKeowen's 'Umina Imprinted'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/jill-mckeowens-umina-imprinted/) - Jill McKeowen's 'Umina Imprinted' From Sunday Morning, Here The sun and crowd have left the beachto a wall of leaden skyand low tide printing waves, set after set,for a boy on a boardmucking about in the white edge.It’s quiet on the dunes awayfrom new streets and subdivisions, the flash of houses,colour-bond yards, queen palmsglossing overold
- [Sophia Wilson's 'Cutting Teeth'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/sophia-wilsons-cutting-teeth/) - Sophia Wilson's 'Cutting Teeth' from Sea Skins days grow rareas hen’s teeth they are getting their teethinto the mountain the weather setsour teeth on edge politiciansbare their teeth the employee receivesa kick in the teeth animals are fedup to the back teeth a witness crawls inby the skin of his teeth clouds are droppingtheir teeth
- [Jonas Zdanys](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/jonas-zdanys/) - Jonas Zdanys was born in New Britain, Connecticut, a few months after his parents arrived in the United States from a United Nations camp for Lithuanian refugees. He received his B.A. in English from Yale University and his M.A. and PhD in English from the State University of New York. A bilingual poet and translator,
- [Angie Contini's 'ballad of weather'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/angie-continis-ballad-of-weather/) - Angie Contini's 'ballad of weather' from fierCe the sky does not cry or feel blue it is simply the skysometimes it rains and the rivers rise but not in anger or with quiet defiance they simply riseand maybe the wind moves us to tears but not because it is singing a secret the wind moves
- [Launch of the 2025 Pocket Poets Books Series](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/launch-of-the-2025-pocket-poets-books-series/) - 2 PM Sunday 26 January 2025 (Australia/Survival Day)The Shop Gallery Glebe, 112 Glebe Point Road Glebe Books will be available for sale. Get the whole 2025 series plus 2 other random books from previous series by becoming a Friend of Flying Islands Poetry Community for just $100
- [Yannis Rentzos 'THE HEAD OF ARTHUR RIMBAUD'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/yannis-rentzos-the-head-of-arthur-rimbaud/) - Yannis Rentzos 'THE HEAD OF ARTHUR RIMBAUD' from Divertente and other poems The head of Arthur Rimbaudprefaced by a knifeIn the neck, the cheeksthe sweaty kneesuncontrollable, in bracketsRising vowels in stuttersusurps your exophthalmiaSuddenly you flick your hair and it killsYou declaim Molotov cocktails in the snow
- [Kevin Smith's 'NIGHT HERON UNDER A CRESCENT MOON'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/kevin-smiths-night-heron-under-a-crescent-moon/) - Kevin Smith's 'NIGHT HERON UNDER A CRESCENT MOON' from Another Day Japanese wood-block print, Ohara Koson, 1877-1945One could easily miss it. A smallgallery on a back street of this sprawlingcity barely declares itself.Inside, the lights dull to a fogof yellow, the prints set back behindplate glass, framed by dark timber.A woman comes from another room,draws
- [D. G. Lloyd's 'Zhang Wei'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/d-g-lloyds-zhang-wei/) - D. G. Lloyd's 'Zhang Wei' From Alive in Dubbo The young man tore his stomachalong the barbed wire fence,running fast through the canola crops,fields of barley,on the edge of town.There are catheads in my eyes! he screamed.His parents had been deportedback to Shanghai.All the kids made fun of himfor shopping at Great Wall Supermarket.
- [Andrew Burke's 'Internal Cage'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/andrew-burkes-internal-cage/) - Andrew Burke's 'Internal Cage' from Historic Present … just like a poet,contemporary,to grunt and grizzle.What can you tellabout a personfrom their unhappiness?~We all have a cageinside the other cage,openor closed,hanging in there.
- [Mark Mahemof's 'Duct'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/mark-mahemofs-duct/) - Mark Mahemof's 'Duct' from Beautiful Flames I’m directed to an anteroomwith grimy toys, old Women’s Weekliesand an empty chipboard bookshelf.There’s a three-seater couchand a two-seater couchidentically upholsteredin shiny crimson vinyl.There are two mismatched chairsand two fluorescent tubesemitting a bilious, stuttering light.Outside this spaceempty beds keep vigil in darkness.Speckled, buffed linoleumis the flooring of choice.There’s a
- [Anastasia Radievska's 'First Wall - Aleph 1'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/anastasia-radievskas-first-wall-aleph-1/) - Anastasia Radievska's 'First Wall - Aleph 1' From City of the Sun * Місто Сонця building a prison beyond this prison,with the help of many others, building,with hands tied to the ultimate imagination of building aprison beyond this prison, because many of us thought to do soindependently and agreed mutually beneficial, building a prisonbeyond this
- [Iman Budhi Santosa's "Aaaaahhhhhh"](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/iman-budhi-santosas-aaaaahhhhhh/) - Iman Budhi Santosa's "Aaaaahhhhhh" (translated by Kit Kelen and Chrysogonous Siddha Malilang) from The 100 - Celebrating Flying Islands’100th pocket poetry collection yes, right after the foreplayI have to shag youin the tall grass, in the stableor in front of our children’s eyesor better, in front of the mirrorto make our play more honestso we
- [Brian Purcell's '2001'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/brian-purcells-2001/) - Brian Purcell's '2001' From Filmworks 1968IA small boy beneath a big screenthat begins to split, somersault, explodeat the beginning of an infinite journey.I look up.Where was this emptinessand where was my godwhose worship I had abandonedfor these colours splitting my eyesand raw space invading my head?These disembodied voiceslike claws of soundscratch at the fabric of
- [Sou Vai Keng's 'the past smells of something rotten'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/sou-vai-kengs-the-past-smells-of-something-rotten/) - Sou Vai Keng's 'the past smells of something rotten' from art of ignorance like an applefallen on a late summer dayburied under a shroud ofdead leavesa horse carrying a small girlcarelessly steps on itseeds, exposed, dryunder violent suntwo days laterrain nurtures everythingincluding maggotsat last reduced into a formunrecognizableapple is no more, untila poet passes bylooks
- [Mickael Crane's 'A 1974 Brisbane kind of day'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/mickael-cranes-a-1974-brisbane-kind-of-day/) - Mickael Crane's 'A 1974 Brisbane kind of day' From Urban & Landscape/Ordinary Lives The air traffic controller stood at the window,as the planes landed lazily on the Tullamarine tarmac.He took a Nicorette lozenge to quell the urge to smokeas the afternoon sun shone on the fuselages.He took a moment to reflect on his past,remembering cane
- [Carl Walsh's 'First'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/carl-walshs-first/) - Carl Walsh's 'First' From Tarp Green Light my journey began wide-eyed in innocence sun splaying golden light across drunken wheatfield heads intoxicating under red harvester blade as real as fireworks displacing far-off cosmos of darkness and light in shatter of colour wheeling overhead a caravanserai caught in passing of days that trip endlessly forward rain
- [Tug Dumbly's 5 Short Tadpoems](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/tug-dumblys-5-short-tadpoems/) - Tug Dumbly's '5 Short Tadpoems' From Tadpoems 400 Shorts I peaked years ago and was brilliant.No one saw. They were all watchingsome stupid tree fall.*Your fingerprints foundin the dust of a moth’s wing.Law of Nature catches up.*Cat curled up like a cowpatdust motes settlesweetly in the sun.*Beanbag pollinatesa thousand eggsstrew the gutter.*Dawn cup of teamist
- [Nathanael O’Reilly's 'Symptoms of Homesickness'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/nathanael-oreillys-symptoms-of-homesickness/) - Nathanael O’Reilly's 'Symptoms of Homesickness' From Separation Blues: Poems 1994–2024 Being brought to tears by Paul Kelly songs.Never having a dream set outside Australia,even when you’ve lived in half a dozen countries.Craving VB, pasties, Minties and Vegemite.Missing the sound of Richie Benaud’s voiceand the Wide World of Sports theme music.Buying every book about Australiaor by
- [Huang Fan's 'flower maker'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/huang-fans-flower-maker/) - From Flower Ash translated by Josh Stenberg everyone likens a girl’syouth to springand oh the man moved by a girl’s youthis whisperingarranging a plastic floweras though seeking anunforgettable metaphor forthe nearby girl’s breathhe concentrates, holds his own breathawaits fragrance too from the plastic bloomawaits the blow tender as nectarawaits the blossom seasons like a childobediently
- [David Adès 'From Which I Must Always Wake'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/david-ades-from-which-i-must-always-wake/) - From The Heart’s Lush Gardens Before skin : eyes :shy : brown : dreaming timid under lashes :thieving : stealing sideways glances :so many little thefts :at face : at hair : at freckles : at neck :at hands : at fingers :at curve and swell beneath dress :beneath white blouse : beneath : beneath.*Skin
- [Lizz Murphy's 'In the shop doorway'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/lizz-murphys-in-the-shop-doorway/) - from Bitumen Psalms In the shop doorwayI ask him how his wife ishe tells me he is a championfamous in his own landHow his daughter wantsto buy somethingto put in front of her motherto make her happyNow he is able to saytearfullyI am very worriedShe is very sick
- [Angie Contini's 'fierce'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/angie-continis-fierce/) - from fierCe evewill you choose to be fierce now? and in becoming fierce be free this restless mess is for keeping not culling this weight for wanting not mocking when mocking will end you and meeve will you choose to be fierce?with belt on your back nine times and soap on your tongue and snake
- [Sophia Wilson's 'There’s a cabbage patch'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/sophia-wilsons-theres-a-cabbage-patch/) - from Sea Skins out backI haveneglected – poor harvest, withered edgespulpy hearts, dropping headslike the heads on those kidspermanently bentover entertainmenttoo dopaminergicfor slender necks – hearts too long under a boiling suntongues like fibrous stemseyes bolted to seed
- [D.G. Lloyd's 'Devil's Hole'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/d-g-lloyds-devils-hole/) - From Alive in Dubbo Boys getting stoned and jumping off the cliffinto the deepest part of the river;no one knows for sure how deep.See you in Cobar! we shouted, as we drifted away downstream.Flocks of cockatoos screeched as they flew over the slopes,the dirt road and metal posts,fallen logs and blue-green algae,dead ryegrass undulating.I nearly
- [Kit wins Newcastle Poetry Prize](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/kit-wins-newcastle-poetry-prize/) - The Flying Islands Poetry Community president and Flying Islands Pocket Poets Series editor has won the coveted Newcastle University Newcastle Poetry Prize with his poem ‘Dombóvár’ From the judges' report: "The winning poem, ‘Dombovar’ by Kit Kelen, ranked very high on both our original lists and grew in stature with successive rereads. ‘Dombovar’ skilfully integrates
- [Winner of the 2024 Manuscript Poetry Competition](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/winner-of-the-2024-manuscript-poetry-competition/)
- [‘Sad’ by Alan Jefferies](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/sad-by-alan-jefferies/) - from Seem for six months after he died she made a fire the flame lit her eyes like he had the warmth hugged her bones like he had the smoke made her laugh like he had for six monthsafter he died she made a fire
- [2024 Manuscript Competition - Longlisted Poets](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/2024-manuscript-competition-longlisted-poets/) - Congratulations to the following poets who have made the long list of poets for the 2024 Manuscript Competition. Thank you to all the competition participants. Keep expressing yourself through poetry. Ali Taghvai, On the Boat of Life Ashleigh Synnott, The Technology I Assume C. J. Anderson-Wu, Clear My Name Damien Becker, Thin Reed Throat Himara
- [Poetry's Community](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/poetrys-community/) - Published: www.textjournal.com.au/april00/kelenCitation: Kelen, C. Poetry's Community (2000). Poetry's Community. Text - Journal of Writing and Writing Courses, 4(1) Abstract: The paper examines the idea of community by means of its expression especially in modernist poetries. Theories of Bourdieu, Blanchot, Levinas, Lingis and especially Lyotard's construct, the differend, are applied to the project of assessing the
- [Greg McLaren's '17'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/greg-mclarens-17/) - from After Han Shan A group of young women play soccer in the park,in the fading light their perfume mingles with sweat,and they’ve got butterflies tattooed on their tailbones,or Celtic-looking script on their forearms.Their friends are girls in Camp Quality bandanasand two gay men in acid wash jeans.I cough and they glance my way,my temples
- [Lou Smith](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/lou-smith/) - Lou Smith is a Melbourne-based poet of Welsh, Jamaican and English heritage who grew up in Newcastle, NSW. Her poetry has been published in journals and anthologies both in Australia and overseas including Wasafiri, Mascara Literary Review, A Slow Combusting Hymn, Overland, The Caribbean Writer, Nine Muses Poetry, sx Salon, Soft Surface, and Caribbean Quarterly.
- [Towards the Open Sea: Martin Langford launches  ‘The Leaving’ by Brian Purcell](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/towards-the-open-sea-martin-langford-launches-the-leaving-by-brian-purcell/) - Martin Langford launched The Leaving by Brian Purcell, Flying Island Books 2021 at a COVID impacted Poets Picnic at Markwell on 19 December 2021 I’d like to begin with the acknowledgement of a debt. It was Brian who first guided me towards the community of other poets. In the early eighties, I had been living on the South Coast
- [Jane Skelton](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/jane-skelton/) - Jane Skelton is a Blue Mountains writer of poetry, short stories and novels. Chimera, her chapbook of prose and poetry was recently published by Rochford Press. Lives of the Dead and Other Stories was published in 2013 by Spineless Wonders, and her novella Flying Foxes was short-listed in the Carmel Bird Award and published as
- ['Word Flight' by Sophia Wilson](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/word-flight-by-sophia-wilson/) - I woke to hear the murmurings of a new language: brainstem compromise, cerebromedullary disconnection, de-efferented state My brain was inundated and turned to slosh like plains after the flood’s passed through speech swept away by torrent vocal cords divorced from breath expression marooned and I am now a silent island devoid of movement and of
- [Iris Fan Xing 'amygdala or the bald head trail'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/iris-fan-xing-amygdala-or-the-bald-head-trail/) - From South of Words of course the path changes regardless of your leadboulders gather or split against the lapping below but the sea quenches your eyesstill seasons away from its miragean iceberg is also just a thought along our meandering from each snake holea sun glares out we look away treading on in disbelief
- [Candy Tang Ting 'unrequited love'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/candy-tang-ting-unrequited-love/) - from Barefoot Running a whale falls in lovenot for the first time but this time it’s worseruthless submarine
- [Jane Skelton’s ‘Moniave, Scotland’](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/jane-skeltons-moniave-scotland/) - from What the river told me in a pub in MoniaveI think I’ve found my people enveloped in a clutch of folk musicians singing at the top of my voiceI see a thin child enter with a wolfhound on a lead but when she turns and looks upI she is a little person of wrinkled
- [Dan Disney’s ‘Departmental’](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/dan-disneys-departmental/) - from Mannequin’s Guide to Utopias One thorned with frowns.One with a pet neurosis, will of warm butter. One with a fixed smile overlaying the winceof dreamless obedience. Bit part, all, in a minor empireof flimsy skeletons and mouths that only say yes. Each with a pocket mirror, casting the uncracked glance.
- [Kit Kelen’s ‘silence’](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/kit-kelens-silence/) - from a pocket kit 2 silence has love to curl intoit’s the between words, breathsbetween each touchwhen you’re still touchingbut nothing’s left to say
- [Yao Feng’s ‘fishing’](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/yao-fengs-fishing/) - from Choir Solo it’s the weekendI went fishing the fish I set free last yearmust be adults by now
- [Kerri Shying’s ‘regretsy’](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/kerri-shyings-regretsy/) - from sing out when you want me there were these poems like batsthey come at night flap vain above my whore-bright hairpenless I fight sleep the shapes reach fruitless just that inch too shortand out of ink fourth stanza gone you fleeting bastards get the pen before you sleep I think
- [Xia Fang’s ‘Reflection on the Westminster Bridge Attack  March 2017’](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/xia-fangs-reflection-on-the-westminster-bridge-attack-march-2017/) - from a view of the sky tunnel two gunshots ring out on the streetfell and scatter the passers-bywhen you stand by the bridge or simply walk along the street lamp contemplates ripened wheatripe heads bent low he said he liked the word fertileand that blood must atone for blood
- [Richard Tipping’s ‘Tehran Children’s Film Festival, 1977’](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/richard-tippings-tehran-childrens-film-festival-1977/) - from Instant History All the children ran to see the Empress of Iran blowing out the candles on the carved ice swan. Soldiers the colour of cracked mud, taller than poplars the palace wall imprisons the Holy Forest.
- [Alex Skovron’s ‘Narcissus’](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/alex-skovrons-narcissus/) - from Water Music In the end, of course, he got married to himself. A civil ceremony, nothing too glib, a friendor two, a reporter from The Mirror, the odd flamefrom the past, a waiter with icy water:his watery parents, a little perplexed, looking around,confused because no engagement had been announced. The celebrant was vague, her
- [Richard James Allen’s ‘Flickering Enlightenment’](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/richard-james-allens-flickering-enlightenment/) - from Fixing the Broken Nightingale The question is not how to die but how to liveHow to link the miracle in each moment to the next How to keep the timelessness through so much timeNever enough of course but still a great deal to manage
- [Andrew Burke’s ‘Autobiography’](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/andrew-burkes-autobiography/) - from The Line is Busy each block of wooda head to chop each plantearth pushing up the whistling windan open cloak river rock crabsdrowned sailors’ hands every shadowa sundial arm
- [Rob Shackne’s ‘Stella Fugio’](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/rob-shacknes-stella-fugio/) - from A Chance of Seasons there are stairs to takeand steps to consider, after allthe slender things we arestars can wait a little longerdistance must be reachedlove is met on the landing(a demon black cat flashespast, between our future legs)we recognize each otherone going up the other downwe hardly have time to speakplatitudes of stairs
- [Sarah St Vincent Welch’s ‘apron’](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/sarah-st-vincent-welchs-apron/) - from chalk borders a lap for childrencover for bruised kneespocket for safety pinsflower cuttingscatcher of stains and tearspatchwork gala of painwhere the peels curledyou fronted up for workfronted up for workthe tie tightenedhand behindthreadfinger knothere where I hid my face
- [Beth Spencer’s ‘Flying over the Great Australian Bight’](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/beth-spencers-flying-over-the-great-australian-bight/) - from The Party of Life And those wet white clouds are like an endless soft bed where I could lose myself with youand we could plough like two fish to the horizon
- [‘Unresolved’ by Irina Frolova](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/unresolved-by-irina-frolova-2/) - From Far and Wide I want to move on from the middle of this nowhere to other eyes, hands, lips.But I also want to stay,muddy the waters,make it seem like there is morethere.Make you wonder where I was last weekend,who I did last night; search my body for hints,look to it for validation of your
- [from Harold Legaspi’s Chapter Ten in Letters in Language](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/from-harold-legaspis-chapter-ten-in-letters-in-language/) - My parents know me better than I know myself. Someone who learned the hard way. I learned much later in life. Yaya wrung the neck of the hen then chopped off its head. Did a headless dash. Our bloodied driveway. Never met anyone so fascinated with rust, who took me to warehouses, cemeteries and shipping
- [‘Cliff Walk’ by Judy Johnson](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/cliff-walk-by-judy-johnson/) - from Exhibit Cliff wind has a particularwhistling sound like a gas bottle released a quarter turn – gulls tumble in its slipstreamwallabies are fastened to the grass by their ears. Here on the high sidewe squint the miles of absolute blue and watch the white knots of diving birdsunraveling to stitch the sea. In this ritual of circlesthe trees
- [‘Earth or sky’ by Michael Brennan](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/earth-or-sky-by-michael-brennan/) - Michael Brennan’s from the earth here She was talking about a field,a field empty with the sky.We had seen it a thousand times,never the same. She said she would go thereand lie under the blue skyand sink into the ground while looking at the sky. She said it was like sinking into the sky when she did
- ['figurative speech' by Matt Turner](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/figurative-speech-by-matt-turner/) - from ‘Traversal’ in Matt Turner’s WAVE 9: COLLAGES another brutalentrance * better love, the wheel: thehouse is pulled out of the fame * fluently,an image dark glimmer, un-substantial * the great builtuniverse, libraryan institution whereby the future itself is its object, isjust
- [‘I’ve walked the same street’ by Anna Couani](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/ive-walked-the-same-street-by-anna-couani/) - From Local I’ve walked the same streetmany timesfor decadesliving in the villageeven if it’s the cityand times beforecarefree barefoot summerson the dirty asphaltnever a shopping streetreminiscent of the barefoot summersof childhoodon the dusty dirt roadsnow pavedthat endlessnessof school holidaysand this placefilled with creative liveswhen before that was only startingand then we were just learningtrying to
- [‘hurricane’ by Jane Skelton](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/hurricane-by-jane-skelton/) - From What the river told me shadows, seeking fingers, creep across the mooras clouds roll overa slag of suggestive, rococo cloudreclines upon the hill’s haunches a pregnant Welsh pony whinnies hysterically into the wind the roosters’ chorus answers, rises from the villagethe squirrels are barkinga teenage fawn hesitates on the edge of the pines in a cathedral in
- [Book Launch 2024 Thursday 4 April 2024 | 6.30 PM](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/book-launch-2024-thursday-4-april-2024-6-30-pm/) - Café Courtyard, Sappho Books, 51 Glebe Point Road Glebe NSW www.sapphobooks.com.au Event Info Entry: Free event, no booking/registration required. Please arrive early, from 6:30 pm, to avoid disappointment. Enjoy drinks, dinner, poetry and live music at the annual Flying Islands Books group launch at the iconic Sappho Café in Glebe. With MC Richard James Allen,
- [Melinda Smith](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/melinda-smith/) - Melinda Smith is a poet, editor, teacher, arts advocate and event curator based in Canberra. She is the author of seven poetry collections, including the 2014 Prime Minister’s Literary Award-winner Drag down to unlock or place an emergency call. She frequently collaborates with artists in other disciplines including dancers, musicians and visual artists, and is also
- [Flying Islands Now on eBay](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/flying-islands-now-on-ebay/) - Some supporters have indicated they prefer to shop on eBay. We applied for and received the registered charity concession rate on eBay. So we have been progressively adding the Flying Islands Pocket Poets Series catalogue to eBay. The number of series added so far is from 2011 to 2019. It will be the same volunteer
- [Haunting & Laughter - Professor Kit Kelen’s One Year Flying Islands Poetry Manuscript Workshop](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/haunting-laughter-professor-kit-kelens-one-year-flying-islands-poetry-manuscript-workshop/) - running from January to December 2024 minimum of six participants maximum of twelve participants $500 flat fee (GST free) (possibility of a scholarship for a poet of demonstrably limited means, letters of support may be provided for successful applicants wishing to apply to a funding body.) certificate on successful completion and transcript available The workshop
- [FLYING ISLANDS 2022 POETRY MANUSCRIPT PRIZE - Announcement of Winners](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/flying-islands-2022-poetry-manuscript-prize-announcement-of-winners/) - Judges: Magdalena Ball, Kit Kelen, Brian Purcell Flying Islands Poetry Community is pleased to announce the winners of its inaugural Poetry Manuscript Prize. It was an extraordinarily difficult task to choose the winners, as so many of the more than fifty entries were of a very high standard. We would like to thank all of
- ['Parents are a Puzzle to be Handed On' by Tug Dumbly](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/parents-are-a-puzzle-to-be-handed-on-by-tug-dumbly/) - 'I don't want to diewithout you knowing who I am'.That's what you once said to me, Mum.Parents are a puzzle to be handed on.'I won't always have you, I haven't got you now',I think to look at my daughter and son.They'll come to sing this self-same song:Parents are a puzzle to be handed on.Like old
- ['Good Bye' by Richard James Allen](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/good-bye-by-richard-james-allen/) - The nurses want you dead.It would be more convenient,but you are not interested in dying.Your brother thinksyou'd be happier deadbut I don't knowif anyone's laughingin the grave.Your wife won't let you dieloyal to a fault, they say.I watch you fall awaylike an old house in the storm.Your eyes are so blank today.Which part of the
- ['If On a Winter's Night a Joey' by Morgan Bell](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/if-on-a-winters-night-a-joey-by-morgan-bell/) - a roadside body was found lifelessthere was a joey in the pouchthe ditch of cold June's mourningteased into, the outside worldlife is full of second chancesthe boy was covered in short hairwhen you name a joey Masonhis crafty antics will endearMason nudged his hatch door opentook a scooter as his prizeprecariously, he was balancedwith adventure
- ['Ideas for Novels 7' by Anna Couani](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/ideas-for-novels-7-by-anna-couani/) - Sydney gives you space to breathewith its up and down hillsand huge liquid ambers skinny peninsulasdeep deep harbour anonymitylost in the crowd trams that live onin Australian novels my generationsin the inner city a blessinga curse the city as it is lived the Greek kidsfour brotherswho built canoesfrom corrugated ironand tarto sink like a stonein
- ['The Light Will not Enter' by Brian Purcell](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/the-light-will-not-enter-by-brian-purcell/) - the light will not enterany crack in my bodyalthough there are many - numberless each daynor can it reachthe mind's dark confusion -would illuminate nothingonly despairnothing I ingestwill make any differencethe scales of the fishare dull in the airand my handsbecome stonecementing the cracks -my old beliefsare today's uncertainties -and everything resolvedeach tiny victoryis undone
- ["Night War" by Lou Smith from Riversalt](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/night-war-by-lou-smith-from-riversalt/) - I can hear them like Formula One cars on a track around my head and on my skin the flame of contusions like tyres exploding on tarmac. My left eyelid has swollen I’ve been sucker punched during the night-long battle. I’m a sore loser. I introduce aids– mosquito coils, aromatherapy candles, citronella oil, the air
- ['In Lithuania' by Jean Kent](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/in-lithuania-by-jean-kent/) - Ruta’s favourite word is ‘maybe’.The dictionary on her lapis heavy as another passengeras she strokes and cossets it, droppingthe juicy apple crystals of Lithuanianand hauling back the slowchewing gum of English. Even what it offers up, she doubts.‘Maybe’ what Vylode said …means this And ‘maybe’this is the road to Panevėžys … There are no maps,the
- [Magdalena Ball's 'Transmission'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/magdalena-balls-transmission/) - If you were looking for a sign or excuseto stay where you are that particularray of light, a twitch at the smallof your back, the downward slantdarkening eyes in the mirrorwarm sun pretending to be gentlehalf blooming crocusesswing chair creakingdead bees floating on the coldpool, death against life. My body has grown heavierweighted by memorycompeting
- [Dimitra Harvey's 'Cicadas'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/dimitra-harveys-cicadas/) - Spring unrolled skies like runners of pink muslin, breezessteeped in honeycomb. Set out flowers in pastryblues and glacé reds; summer simmered at the season’sedge, began to smoke. That’s when I found their shellseverywhere — like pods of blown sugar, trimmedto the trunks of bloodwoods, blue gums.* Yolk light streaked tower windows. Down Dixon Street,the grills
- ['Devil’s Hole' by D.G. Lloyd](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/devils-hole-by-d-g-lloyd/) - Boys getting stoned and jumping off the cliff into the deepest part of the river; no one knows for sure how deep. See you in Cobar! we shouted, as we drifted away downstream.x Flocks of cockatoos screeched as they flew over the slopes, the dirt road and metal posts, fallen logs and blue-green algae, dead
- ['Gun' by D.G. Lloyd](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/gun-by-d-g-lloyd/) - Wrecked farm equipment with webbings of dead grass in the open fields of Lazy River Estate … the overhanging foliage … more than twenty kilometres out of town on the old Dubbo Road was the pistol club. I had only been a few times. Luke told me I could get a One Month Membership. They
- ['Trafalgar Place' by D.G. Lloyd](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/trafalgar-place-by-d-g-lloyd/) - Trafalgar Place ruts in the road painted along the gutter All Drains Lead To Troy Gully and on Wirraway Close a dented No Through Road sign An old house was torn down leaving nothing but a jade plant like the stark withered tree outside Dan Murphy’s the corner of Windsor Parade There is manual labour
- [Geoff Page](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/geoff-page/) - Geoffrey Donald Page (born 7 July 1940) is an Australian poet, translator, teacher and jazz enthusiast. He has published 22 collections of poetry, as well as prose and verse novels. Poetry and jazz are his driving interests, and he has also written a biography of the jazz musician Bernie McGann. He organises poetry readings and
- [Anna Couani](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/anna-couani/) - Anna Couani is a Sydney writer and visual artist who runs The Shop Gallery in Glebe. Her recent publications of poetry (7 books in all) are Thinking Process, Owl Press 2017 and Small Wonders, Flying Islands Press 2012. She co-produced The Harbour Breathes with photomonteur Peter Lyssiotis. She was involved in the small press with
- [Brian Purcell Estuary Exhibition Launch and Reading with Special Guests](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/brian-purcell-estuary-exhibition-launch-and-reading-with-special-guests/) - 3pm Sunday 5 February, 2023 The Shop Gallery, 112 Glebe Point Road, Glebe (on-site, Sydney). Free event, all welcome! To celebrate the launch of Brian Purcell’s Estuary exhibition at The Shop Gallery, there will be a reading focusing on poetry’s relationship with visual art – ekphrasis, typographical, and any other poetry where the visual element is key.
- [2023 Flying Islands Books Launch 5 PM Saturday 4 February 2023](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/2023-flying-islands-books-launch-5-pm-saturday-4-february-2023/) - The Shop Gallery, 112 Glebe Point Road, Glebe (on-site, Sydney). Free event, all welcome! Poems that fit the palms of your hands Sharp-edged, wild-eyed, luminous, empowering pilgrimages. You are invited to the Launch of the new crop of Flying Islands Pocket Books—an extraordinary bouquet of diverse poetic voices in gorgeously crafted volumes that slip easily into
- [Merima Dizdarevic](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/merima-dizdarevic/) - Flying Islands Pocket Poet Publications Self-Preservation Sans Aesthetic Principles images by Bekim GašI
- [Andres Ajens](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/andres-ajens/) - Andrés Ajens is a Chilean poet, essayist, translator and literary activist born in 1961. Among his books of poems and hybrid essays are Conmemoración de inciertas fechas y otro poema (1992), La última carta de Rimbaud (1995), Más íntimas mistura (1998), and O Entrevero (2008). His latest book is Æ (Santiago: Das Kapital Ediciones, 2015). He co-directs and edits for Intemperie Ediciones and is a co-director with
- ['Broomstick Orchestra' by Jane Skelton](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/broomstick-orchestra-by-jane-skelton-2/) - along the lake’s edge our burnt limbs scratch at the sky rapping in the wind − gentle ratapan, a screek a soft scrunching of paperas it passed through us we could only receive it − dreaming of water arms upraised in frozen dance amid the whirlwind of fireour spectral voices sing the conflagration mimic the
- [Vaughan Rapatahana](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/vaughan-rapatahana/) - Vaughan Rapatahana is a New Zealand writer and reviewer. Though perhaps best known for his poetry, his bibliography also includes prose fiction, educational material, academic articles, philosophy, and language critiques. Rapatahana is of Māori ancestry, and many of his works deal with the subjects of colonial repression and cultural encounter. His writing has been published
- [Flying Islands Book Launch and Benefit Show Saturday 12 February 2022 at 2pm (AEDT)](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/flying-islands-book-launch-and-benefit-show-saturday-12-february-2022-at-2pm-aedt/) - Invitation to the Flying Islands Book Launch and Benefit Show Saturday 12 February at 2pm (AEDT) of the 2021 Flying Islands Pocket Poetry Books by Morgan Bell, Anna Couani, Laurie Duggan, Daniel Ionita, Alan Jefferies, Brian Purcell, Jane Skelton and Sarah St Vincent Welch. Order of Launches Zoom Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84922619689 1:30 pm Click the zoom
- ['Unresolved' by Irina Frolova](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/unresolved-by-irina-frolova/) - I want to move on from the middle of this nowhere to other eyes, hands, lips.But I also want to stay,muddy the waters,make it seem like there is morethere. Make you wonder where I was last weekend,who I did last night; search my body for hints,look to it for validation of your relevance. Dig deep for the foundation of us.
- [broomstick orchestra      by Jane Skelton](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/broomstick-orchestra-by-jane-skelton/) - along the lake’s edge our burnt limbs scratch at the sky rapping in the wind − gentle ratapan, a screek a soft scrunching of paper as it passed through us we could only receive it − dreaming of water arms upraised in frozen dance amid the whirlwind of fire our spectral voices sing the conflagration
- [Vale Jill Eileen McKeowen](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/vale-jill-eileen-mckeowen/) - 09/12/1959 — 25/04/2022 62 wonderful years It is with sadness that we advise of the passing of Jill McKeowen, one of Flying Islands Poetry Community's new pocket poets. She succumbed to cancer that she only learned of relatively recently. Her funeral was held on 5 May 2022 at the Pettigrew Funeral Directors' Chapel Mayfield West
- [Yao Feng #15](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/yao-feng-15/) - Xing Hua Temple why is it the Buddha – far from the madding crowd on the hill – sits lounges an air of serenity, over a lotus throne while Jesus has his blood shed on a Good Friday cross? I'll go upstairs with you and we'll see the gilt-decked Buddha projecting dazzling gold in a
- [Magdalena Ball - Precarious Inscruitable](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/magdalena-ball-precarious-inscruitable/) - When the sea rises to eye level tears become redundant every day a baker’s dozen or more the red list has 20,000 names 20,000 is a random number unbounded, like e or Pi though more finite 0 is usually taken for granted understandably like the sound of nomatic flocks passenger pigeons aggregating flapping, filling the
- [from Richard Tipping’s "Instant History"](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/from-richard-tippings-instant-history/) - Imagine Silence Imagine silence and solitude firm as bread. Imagine hunger cutting first slice, first breath. Imagine silence answering each syllable back. Imagine, alone, around, yourself the only sound.
- [from "Riversalt" by Lou Smith](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/from-riversalt-by-lou-smith/) - An Evening Swim at Kilaben Bay Between the wooden slats of the boardwalk distant lights of houses blur in a diffraction of amber like Venus through drizzle or in the curve of waves fanning from shore
- [from Dan Disney’s "Mannequins Guide to Utopias"](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/from-dan-disneys-mannequins-guide-to-utopias/) - Monologue inside Breughel’s first Tower of Babel the colonists always pack old spectres and memory, mad apparition, peers through cracks in day we scatter into, our words ascending across air… and once that’s out, silence fllas like love, but permanent, empires lying dormant (unstuffed toys) we’ll kiss the photographs flat when gone while wrong-headed statues
- [from "What the river told me" by Jane Skelton](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/from-what-the-river-told-me-by-jane-skelton/) - Ben Boyd’s tower The bay’s silk curtain is blue milk, draped from the opposite shore the sea pricked out in boats their white sails dancing upon its pleats through the spyglass he scanned the coves, the inlets, their crescent smiles and across to Eden a Stink, the whale bones lying about covered by feeding crows
- [Tax-deductible donations to support Flying Islands Poetry Community](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/tax-deductible-donations-to-support-flying-islands-poetry-community/) - Tax-deductible donations can be made to the Australian Cultural Fund (the ACF) to support the Flying Islands Poetry Community. Your tax-deductible donations made through ACF are paid in full to Flying Islands as monthly grants/disbursements to support the ongoing publication of the Flying Islands Pocket Poets series of poetry books. Tax-deductible donations can be made
- [from Geoff Page’s "Codicil"](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/from-geoff-pages-codicil/) - Adulterers After that first urgent kissing at the door and all the prearrangements whispered down the phone and all that splendid disarray of clothes, the interplay of skins and liquids, that short delirium of smells and all such pure antiphonal delights the cigarettes are lit at last … and sprawled there in a twist of
- [from Dominique Hecq and Béatrice Machet’s "Crypto"](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/from-dominique-hecq-and-beatrice-machets-crypto-2/) - Poetic Assaults veils sails or waves never will abolish the porthole neither cataract nor tears ever will abolish the retina a throw of flowers never will abolish sorrow
- [from Daniel Ionita’s "Short Bursts of Eternity"](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/from-daniel-ionitas-short-bursts-of-eternity/) - pro-Patria I have died once or twice before, I believe, for the motherland and the nation. Or so I thought, initially, giving up my ghost ravaged by a youthful imbecility, bordering on an ecstasy, akin to that of the nincompoop and anorexic saints, painted willy-nilly on church walls. These deaths were as senseless as their
- [from Candy Tang Ting’s "Barefoot Running"](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/from-candy-tang-tings-barefoot-running/) - senryu long summer afternoon children in a village house make music shouting into a fan
- [from Greg McLaren’s "After Han Shan"](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/rom-greg-mclarens-after-han-shan/) - 1. This bedsit is home to a country boy. Buses or cabs rarely drop passengers off: the street-side trees so still that crows roost here, the gutter full of cigarette butts and used frangers. I go chocolate shopping on my own, smoke joints in the park with my girlfriend. And in this little flat? Books
- [from Iris Fan Xing’s "South of Words"](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/from-iris-fan-xings-south-of-words/) - the sea calls me on a day like this a cool glass of beer calls me to sit on the beach at sunset feeling the waves in my head rocking with the sea a movement bringing me back to my mother’s womb when she walked up the hill her steps carrying both of us all
- [from Patricia Sykes’ "Among the Gone of It"](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/from-patricia-sykes-among-the-gone-of-it/) - Ropes 2 upside down you’re a circus gypsy a wanderer on a rope who swings and sings to herself the way an upturned world makes the proper sense
- [from Laurie Duggan’s "A Kite Hangs Above the Border"](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/from-laurie-duggans-a-kite-hangs-above-the-border/) - Allotment 29 snowdrop, then daffodil, pink on a rose branch, green on a climber suddenly parsley then mint
- [List of These Flying Islands Blog Posts](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/list-of-these-flying-islands-blog-posts/)
- [A review of "Local" By Anna Couani](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/a-review-of-local-by-anna-couani/) - Reviewed by Beatriz Copello Source: Compulsive Reader www.compulsivereader.com/2022/03/12/a-review-of-local-by-anna-couani Jon Anderson in Understanding Cultural Geography: Places and Traces, Routledge, 2015 said: “Places come by their meanings and identities as a result of the complex intersections of culture and context that occur within that specific location.” Local, a fascinating book of poetry by the well-known artist and poet Anna
- [from Clark Gormley’s "Not What You Think"](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/from-clark-gormleys-not-what-you-think/) - Coffee by the Sea brown crust on white foam at the bogey-hole today hints of caramel
- [from Gillian Swain’s "My Skin its own sky"](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/from-gillian-swains-my-skin-its-own-sky/) - Renovator’s hints and tips No crimes are hidden in the white bathroom of one who washes often and cleans rarely.
- [Merima Dizdarevic](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/merima-dizdarevic-2/)
- [from Iman Budhi Santosa’s "The Faces of Java"](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/from-iman-budhi-santosas-the-faces-of-java/) - Silversmiths from Kotagede life was blown gently into the silver, gram by gram binding the emerald, enhancing the ruby eyes shining on each finger hammer and file danced at the stroke of midnight solder hissed in between and light taps to the belly, ‘antique accessories when weighed are worth more than the maker’s finger’ for
- [from Rob Shackne’s "A Chance of Seasons"](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/from-rob-shacknes-a-chance-of-seasons/) - A Poem for the Hungry Ghosts I won’t wear red to draw attention, sing or whistle my favourite melody. I won’t linger near the shadowed walls to stir or fret the hungry ghosts, unrested souls trying to recall a life without fear or violence or tragic luck. Their whispers are all sighs and envy as
- [an elevensie from Kerri Shying’s "Knitting Mangrove Roots"](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/an-elevensie-from-kerri-shyings-knitting-mangrove-roots/) - Note: an ‘elevensie’ is a poem form with the title in the middle and five lines on either side. how about I sleep out here tonight final evening let the ropes tighten to the dew hold the shape of days before the road and home inhale me set me once again to use on trickier
- [a big thank you !](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/a-big-thank-you/) - dear islanders and fellow travellers thanks to all for your efforts towards the Flying Islands book launch and the benefit exhibition in Sydney last weekend …(Saturday 12 February 2022).while the final figures are not quite in yet, it looks like we will slightly surpass last year's exhibition and launch take … which means we're well
- [A review of Pretend I Don’t Exist by Morgan Bell](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/a-review-of-pretend-i-dont-exist-by-morgan-bell/) - Reviewed by Magdalena Ball - Compulsive Reader www.compulsivereader.com/2022/02/17/a-review-of-pretend-i-dont-exist-by-morgan-bell/ Anyone who has read Morgan Bell’s first poetry collection, Idiomatic for the People, will not be surprised by how innovative her new poetry book Pretend I Don’t Exist is. The book was written as a poetic response to the nonfiction book Wild Koalas of Port Stevens edited by Christina Gregory and uses a range
- [Choir Solo](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/choir-solo/) - Part 9 of Yao Feng’s ‘Cape Verde Fragments’ being surrounded by the sea is a destiny it will never turn around it stands on the reefs, commanding you to sing you don’t have much but singing makes you wealthy because of song birds fly out from your throat because of singing flowers come up through
- [Kit Kelen](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/kit-kelen-2/) - Christopher (Kit) Kelen is a poet and painter, resident in the Myall Lakes of NSW. Published widely since the seventies, he has a dozen full length collections in English as well as translated books of poetry in Chinese, Portuguese, French, Italian, Spanish, Indonesian, Swedish, Norwegian and Filipino. His latest volume of poetry in English is Poor
- [Anna Couani](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/anna-couani-2/) - skype window she taping people from her village The Peloponnese in an agrarian past collecting voices that will disappear forever then standing on this edifice to look backwards and then deeper, into the 18th century now like a roaring train, a novel the history of Greece, so tragic she says another she doing genealogical research
- [HULLO TO THESE FLYING ISLANDS, from JEAN KENT](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/hullo-to-these-flying-islands-from-jean-kent/) - JEAN KENT was born in Chinchilla, Qld, in 1951. She published her first poems in a literary magazine in 1970, while she was completing an Arts Degree (majoring in psychology) at the University of Qld; her first collection, Verandahs, appeared twenty years later, in 1970. Since then, another eight books of her poetry have been published.
- [Magdalena Ball](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/magdalena-ball-2/) - Magdalena Ball is a novelist, poet, reviewer and interviewer, and is the Managing Editor of Compulsive Reader, a literary review site that has been running for some 23 years. Her interview podcast, Compulsive Reader Talks, has over 150 wonderful interviews with the likes of Maria Tumarkin, Ben Okri, and John Banville, to name just a few. She has
- [Béatrice MACHET](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/beatrice-machet-2/) - GREETINGS FROM FRANCE.... Salut aux amis de la communauté FLYING ISLANDS ! BIO Béatrice (Anne-Marie, Marie-Jeanne) Machet is a French born poet, living between France and the USA, whose dance lessons as a child influenced and still influence her writing. As a teen she learned a lot from the Native American point of view about Native American history and Native cultures,
- [Kerri Shying](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/kerri-shying-2/) - Kerri Shying is a poet of Wiradjuri and Chinese family, publishing across many journals and anthologies. She is the author of a bilingual pocketbook of poems "sing out when you want me",2017, Flying Island Press, "Elevensies", 2018 Puncher and Wattman and “Knitting Mangrove Roots”2019, Flying Island Press. Kerri held the Varuna Dr Eric Dark Flagship Fellowship for
- [Kerri Shying - part two..](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/kerri-shying-part-two/) - Kerri Shying is a poet of Wiradjuri and Chinese family, publishing across many journals and anthologies. She is the author of a bilingual pocketbook of poems "sing out when you want me",2017, Flying Island Press, "Elevensies", 2018 Puncher and Wattman and “Knitting Mangrove Roots”2019, Flying Island Press. Kerri held the Varuna Dr Eric Dark Flagship Fellowship
- [Les Wicks](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/les-wicks-2/) - Hey, Les here. Flying islands have done such a great job, around 80titles. Such fabulousness! Mine came out in 2019 (remember that virus free time?) Looking forward to reading the other entries! Les Wicks’ 14th book of poetry is Belief (Flying Islands, 2019). For 45 years Les has been active in the Australian literary community. He has been a guest at
- [MYRON LYSENKO](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/myron-lysenko-2/) - Myron Lysenko began writing haiku and senryu in the late 1990’s. He is the Victorian Representative for the Australian Haiku Society. He has published seven books of poetry, the most recent two consisting of haiku. His latest, published by Flying Islands was released in January 2021 and is titled a ghost gum leans over.Myron has run almost 50
- [john bennett ~ example of work](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/john-bennett-example-of-work/) - Much is on my website https://photovoltaicpoetry.com.au/, including a link to my new album based on my daily Pandemic journal, VIRUS 2020. Poem ‘Take ekphrastic inspiration by responding to Olive Cotton’s The photographer’s shadow (1935).’ Here is my effort in any case, perhaps too prosaic, too much information, a tribute when I come to think of it,
- [john bennett](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/john-bennett-2/) - writer, photographer, video artist. PhD 'A new defence of poetry'. His exhibition ‘First light, from Eos to Helios’ at Coffs Harbour Regional Gallery, 2017, consisted of photographs, video and texts advocating natural aesthetics as a way to connect back to nature. An ABC documentary on this project ‘Poetry at First Light’ was broadcast on Radio
- [Xmas Day 2020](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/xmas-day-2020/) - Congratulations to Kit for being prodigious, inventive and an effective whirl of quarks, bosons and tachyons, and to all Flying Island authors and readers.I am concentrating on natural aesthetics, given the ecocatastrophe we are sliding into. Twenty years ago Suzi Gablik wrote ‘The new questions that are being raised are no longer issues of style
- [CLARK GORMLEY](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/clark-gormley/) - Clark Gormley is a poet and singer-songwriter based in Newcastle, Australia. He has been involved in organising and promoting local poetry readings for over 20 years.He has been published in several anthologies including Visions From the Valley, A Slow Combusting Hymn and Brew 30 Years of Poetry at the Pub Newcastle. He has written and performed three nerd-themed
- [Rob Schackne](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/rob-schackne-2/) - Born in New York, he lived in many countries until Australia finally took him in. He was a Foreign Expert EFL teacher in China for many years. He now lives in Castlemaine, Vic. where he enjoys the blue skies, fresh air and the birds. There were some extreme sports once; now he plays (mostly) respectable
- [MATT TURNER](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/matt-turner-2/) - I'm the author of Wave 9: Collages (Flying Islands, 2020) and Not Moving (Broken Sleep Books, 2019). I am the translator of Weeds, by Lu Xun (Seaweed Salad Editions, 2019), and co-translator (with Weng Haiying) of books by Yan Jun, Hu Jiujiu, Ou Ning, Mi Jialu and others. In addition, essays and reviews can be
- [ANDREW BURKE](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/andrew-burke-2/) - In 1950, Andrew Burke wrote his first poem – in chalk on a slate board. It was variations on the letter A. In 1958 he wrote a poem modeled on Milton’s sonnet on his blindness. Luckily it is lost. In 1960 he wrote a religious play about the Apostles during the time Jesus was in
- [Jan 1 2021](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/jan-1-2021/) - A new year ahead, full of potential, energy and disappointment with moments of clarity and elation no doubt for Flying Islands poets. Jan 1 2021 Alone. Moon brimming as she parachutesinto the Nature Reserve, the estuary nowa wasteland of sand and sticks and logsand stingray hollows, new lagoons formed,the river has shunted north a
- [FLYING ISLANDS SYDNEY BOOKLAUNCH - SUNDAY 21ST FEBRUARY 2021](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/flying-islands-sydney-booklaunch-sunday-21st-february-2021/)
- [Chris Song "pomegranate" (trans. Lucas Klein) × Steven Schroeder "via crucis"](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/chris-song-pomegranate-trans-lucas-klein-x-steven-schroeder-via-crucis/) - Chris Song is a poet, translator and editor based in Hong Kong. He has published four collections of poetry and many volumes of poetry in translation. Song received an “Extraordinary Mention” at Italy’s UNESCO-recognized Nosside World Poetry Prize 2013. He won the Young Artist Award at the 2017 Hong Kong Arts Development Awards, presented by
- [Judy Johnson](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/judy-johnson-2/) - Judy Johnson has published five full length collections and several chapbooks. Her books have won the Victorian Premier's Award and been shortlisted in both the NSW and WA Premier's Awards. She's been awarded the Wesley Michel Wright Prize 3 times. Her latest collection is 'Dark Convicts'(UWA publishing, 2017) a poetic exploration of her African American
- [Steven Schroeder](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/steven-schroeder-2/) - Steven Schroeder is a poet and painter who lives and works in Chicago. More at stevenschroeder.org. A Suicide FlowerA cadre of hibiscus revolutionariesgather in the hedges along thisbusy street, lie low to creepbeneath the iron fence set upto separate them from massesmoving at the speed of money.Here and there a suicide flowerthrows herself into the crowd,detonates
- [Chrysogonus Siddha Malilang](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/chrysogonus-siddha-malilang-2/) - Chrysogonus Siddha Malilang was a nomad writer and translator before finally settling in in Southern Sweden. He started writing professionally - as a journalist - at an early age of 12, mainly motivated by an innocent wish of seeing his name printed in newspaper. After writing a number of short stories for various newspapers, he
- [Rob Schackne #2 - Dábāo](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/rob-schackne-2-dabao/) - In China (when I lived there)in restaurants it was normala 1/4 acre of foodit all arrivesthe same timeeveryone gotone bite hotbefore it's coldspins on the tableand fasterin winteralwaysthe hilarity excessand wasteof everything plastic bagsand containersout beforethey leftgone beforeyou knew it
- [Rob Schackne #1 - The Condition of Things](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/rob-schackne-1-the-condition-of-things/) - The Condition of Things You could wonder dogs are said to listen to music loyally though a bit blankly to a shuffle of jazz rock and blues and country companionably classically sighing occasionally eyes closed asleep at your feet something captured before it rains perhaps dreaming of wild things of poetry many aspirations another walk
- [Rob Schackne #3 - Winter Birds](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/rob-schackne-3-winter-birds/) - Might we believe there is darkness in the swallows the sound of purple bigger & smaller but only birds one two three were they shallow that flew away give piano player a bottle of beer bring me down does the music ever come back where do I stand where’s the mic long long night where
- [Iman Budhi Santosa](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/iman-budhi-santosa-2/) - Iman Budhi Santosa, an Indonesian poet published by Flying Island in 2015, passed away in December 2020. He had dedicated his life to mentor countless creative writers and poets in Yogyakarta, Indonesia since 1969. Iman is known as one of the street poets in Yogyakarta, actively writing poems and plays even in the three-year period
- [Nathan Curnow](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/nathan-curnow-2/) - Nathan Curnow is an award-winning poet, spoken word performer and past editor of literary journal, Going Down Swinging. His books include The Ghost Poetry Project, RADAR, The Right Wrong Notes and The Apocalypse Awards. He has recently taught creative writing at Federation University, and toured Europe in 2018 with loop artist, Geoffrey Williams, performing in Poland and opening the Heidelberg Literature
- [Harold Legaspi](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/harold-legaspi-2/) - Harold Legaspi is a poet writing in Darug land. Letters in Language, fromFlying Islands Pocket Books of Poetry series with Cerberus Press and Association of Stories in Macau, January 2021. Excerpt from The Edge of Seas vs Lost Generation Loners Neither man nor woman. No beast nor man. Begets ideals begets passion begets
- [Chen Fei](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/chen-fei/) - Chen Fei, born and raised in Guizhou, is a story hunter, a traveler and a graphic designer. Resident in Macao for thirteen years, Fei is currently a Resident Tutor at Henry Fok Pearl Jubilee Residential College in the University of Macau, where he is currently completing a PhD degree in Literary Studies. ______________________ the patio
- [Sarah St Vincent Welch](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/sarah-st-vincent-welch-2/) - Sarah St Vincent Welch is a Canberra-based writer and image-maker. She is one of the organisers of 'That Poetry Thing That Is On At Smith's Every Monday Night' at Smith's Alternative (a live-music venue that supports art and community). She is part of the writer and visual artists collective 'Postcards from the Sky' which meet
- [Dan Disney](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/dan-disney-2/) - Originally from Australia, Dan Disney has lived in South Korea for the last decade, where he teaches in the English Literature Program at Sogang University, in Seoul. His collections include and then when the (John Leonard Press), either, Orpheus (UWAP), and Report from a border (Light-Trap Press). He is editor of Beyond Babel: Creative Writing in Second Language Contexts (John Benjamins), and co-edited both Writing
- [Irina Frolova](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/irina-frolova-2/) - Irina Frolova was born in Moscow in 1981, in the former Soviet Union. She moved to Australia in 2003, and now lives on the Awabakal land in NSW with her three children and two fur babies. Irina has a degree in philology from Moscow City Pedagogical university, and she is currently studying psychology at Deakin
- [George Watt](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/george-watt/) - The author and editor of several books, both university monographs and English language text books, I have come to the writing poetry late in life with the publication last year of "Sandpaper Swimming" with Flying Island Books. My first book of poetry. My first book, "The Fallen Woman in the 19th Century English Novel",
- [Richard James Allen](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/richard-james-allen-2/) - Richard James Allen is an Australian poet. He was born in Kempsey, New South Wales, on the unceded lands of the Dunghutti Aboriginal People. His writing has appeared widely in journals, anthologies, and online over many years. His latest volume of poetry, The short story of you and I, was published by UWA Publishing in February 2019. A suite of recent poems, Minimum Correct
- [Brian Purcell](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/brian-purcell-2/) - Brian Purcell I've been publishing poetry in magazines such as Meanjin and Southerly, and anthologies like Australian Love Poems, for nearly forty years. During 1985-95 I was the lead singer/lyricist for the band Distant Locust, which toured Europe and released CDs there in the early 90s. I am also a painter and working towards my
- [David McAleavey](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/david-mcaleavey-2/) - Greetings. My Flying Islands pocket book is titled TALK MUSIC, and it appeared in early 2018 (copyright date Dec. 2017). I spent the Fall 2016 semester in a faculty exchange at the University of Macau, part of a short-lived program between UM and my home university, George Washington University in Washington, DC. I have now retired from
- [S.K.Kelen](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/s-k-kelen-2/) - S. K. Kelen is an Australian poet who enjoys hanging around the house philosophically and travelling. His works have been widely published in journals, ezines and newspapers, anthologies and in his books. Kelen’s oeuvre covers a diverse range of styles and subjects, and includes pastorals, satires, sonnets, odes, narratives, haiku, epics, idylls, horror stories, sci-fi,
- [Greg McLaren](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/greg-mclaren-2/) - I'm a poet whose work has been published almost widely. After Han Shan, my Flying Islands book, is from way back in 2012. Other books include The Kurri Kurri Book of the Dead, Australian ravens and Windfall (Puncher & Wattmann). Valley After Louise Crisp The yards and droughts, they went on forever. The hills baring themselves from our shame. Skeletal fruit
- [Alex Skovron](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/alex-skovron-2/) - Alex Skovron was born in Poland, lived briefly in Israel, and emigrated to Australia in 1958 aged nearly ten. His family settled in Sydney, where he grew up and completed his studies. From the early 1970s he worked as an editor for book publishers in Sydney and (after 1980) Melbourne. His poetry has appeared widely in
- [Carol Archer](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/carol-archer/) - Carol Archer is an Australian visual artist who lives at Markwell in the Myall Lakes region of N.S.W. Archer’s solo and collaborative works have been exhibited in Australia, Macao, Hong Kong, China, Japan, Sweden, Norway, Spain, Italy and Portugal. Her most recent solo exhibition was Drawing Breath/ Desenhar. Respirar (Sociedade Nacional de Belas Artes, Lisbon, 2017). Archer's recent
- [Vaughan Rapatahana (Te Ātiawa)](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/vaughan-rapatahana-te-atiawa/) - Vaughan Rapatahana (Te Ātiawa) commutes between homes in Hong Kong, Philippines and Aotearoa New Zealand. He is widely published across several genre in both his main languages, te reo Māori and English and his work has been translated into Bahasa Malaysia, Italian, French, Mandarin, Romanian, Spanish. I am a Flying Islands poet - Atonement Macau, 2015. Right now
- [Steve Armstrong - What's Left](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/steve-armstrong-whats-left/) - Hi fellow Flying Islanders I'm thrilled to have joined your ranks; my pocket book What's Left was launched December 2020. I'm a poet living in Newcastle, who works as social worker/counsellor when I'm not writing. Dimitra Harvey, poet and editor of Mascara Literary Review launched What's Left at the Poet's Picnic in Markwell, and said in conclusion- " For
- [Morgan Bell](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/morgan-bell-2/) - Morgan Bell is a Port Stephens author of short fiction. Her books include Sniggerless Boundulations, Laissez Faire, and Intersection Control: Collected Works. She is a qualified technical writer, creative writing teacher, and editor of Sproutlings: A Compendium of Little Fictions. Her first chapbook of visual poetry Idiomatic, For The People was released in 2019. She is due to have a Flying Islands pocketbook
- [Dominique Hecq](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/dominique-hecq/) - Dominique Hecq grew up in the French-speaking part of Belgium. She now lives in Melbourne. With a BA in Germanic Philology, an MA in literary translation, and a PhD in English, Hecq writes across genres and disciplines—and sometimes across tongues. Her creative works include a novel, three collections of stories, and ten volumes of poetry— Kaosmos (Melbourne
- [Michael Crane](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/michael-crane-2/) - Michael Crane has made several appearances in Overland, Meanjin, Southerly and numerous other journals and the Best Australian Poems 2011, 2014 & 2015. He has had ten collections published with small presses since 1998 including his book with Flying Islands calledPoems from the 29th Floor released December 2019. He organised Poetry Idol for the Melbourne
- [Lou Smith](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/lou-smith-2/) - Lou Smith is a Melbourne-based poet of Welsh, Jamaican and English heritage who grew up in Newcastle, NSW. Her poetry has been published in journals and anthologies both in Australia and overseas including Wasafiri, Mascara Literary Review, A Slow Combusting Hymn, Overland, The Caribbean Writer, Nine Muses Poetry, sx Salon, Soft Surface and Caribbean Quarterly. Her book riversalt was published
- [Jane Skelton - New member of Flying Islands!](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/jane-skelton-new-member-of-flying-islands/) - I’m very happy to be a member of Flying Islands, with a new collection of poetry, Somewhere North (working title) to be a future Flying Islands Pocket Book of Poems. I’m a Blue Mountains based writer of poetry, short stories and novels that are seeking publishers. My collection Lives of the Dead and Other Stories was published in 2013
- [Xia Fang](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/xia-fang/) - Xia Fang is a bilingual poet and translator. She has published two collections of translated poems, and has since begun writing her own poetry. Her poems have appeared in The Postcolonial Text, Mascara, Mānoa, Marathon, and two online writing projects: Project 365+1 and Project 52. Her early written work was influenced by new life experiences, including relocating to Macao where she completed her
- [Dylan Jones](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/dylan-jones/) - Dylan Jones is a professional photographer and filmmaker whose interests include nature photography, night sky, drone photography and portraiture. He participated for a month on Project366. He is also a graphic designer and typesetter. He backed up That Poetry Thing At Smiths Every Monday Night as camera person and live technician when it went to
- [Susan Fealy](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/susan-fealy-2/) - Susan Fealy is a poet and clinical psychologist. Her poems have been published in many Australian journals and anthologies including Best Australian Poems 2009, 2010, 2013 and 2017. Others appear in the United States, India and Sweden. Among awards for her poetry are the NSW Society of Women Writers National Poetry Prize and the Henry Kendall Poetry Award. Her first
- [Odveig Klyve](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/odveig-klyve-2/)
- [Yao Feng](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/yao-feng/)
- [Wang Mingyun](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/wang-mingyun/)
- [Robert Wood](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/robert-wood-2/)
- [Rae Desmond Jones](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/rae-desmond-jones-2/) - Rae Desmond Jones (11 August 1941 – 27 June 2017) was an Australian poet, novelist, short story writer and politician. Jones was born in the mining town of Broken Hill in the far West of New South Wales. Although many of his poems and stories are concerned with urban experience, he always felt that desert landscapes were central to his language and perception. He
- [Robert Edmonds](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/robert-edmonds-3/)
- [Jonas Zdanys](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/jonas-zdanys-2/)
- [Gail Hennessy](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/gail-hennessy-2/)
- [Michael Brennan](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/michael-brennan-2/)
- [Philip Salom](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/philip-salom-2/)
- [Geoff Page](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/geoff-page-2/)
- [Tug Dumbly](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/tug-dumbly-2/) - Tug Dumbly / Geoff Forrester Bio Tug Dumbly is the name, and sometimes Albatross, of Geoff Forrester, a poet and performer who has worked widely in live venues, schools, and radio. As a performer, he set up and ran some seminal spoken word nights in Sydney, including the legendary and drunken Bardflys. He has performed
- [Dael Allison](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/dael-allison/) - Dael Allison: a poet, fiction writer, essayist and editor crawling towards the finish of a PhD in creative writing at the University of Newcastle. So, lying low until mid-year. Walleah Press, published my book Fairweather’s Raft in 2012, the outcome of my Masters of Creative Arts, UTS, researching artist Ian Fairweather. Eleven of the poems were made
- [Cui Yuwei](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/cui-yuwei/)
- [James Walton](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/james-walton/) - JAMES WALTON is published in many anthologies, journals, and newspapers. He is the author of four widely acclaimed collections of poetry. ‘The Leviathan’s Apprentice’, ‘Walking Through Fences’, ‘Unstill Mosaics’, and ‘Abandoned Soliloquies’. His fifth collection will be released shortly. His work has been translated to and published in Spanish and Farsi. He was nominated for
- [Beth Spencer - The Party of Life](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/beth-spencer-the-party-of-life/) - The Party of Life was published by Flying Islands in the Pocket Book series in 2015. Translated with love and care by Ruby Chen. Huge thanks to series editor Kit Kelen. Beth Spencer is an award-winning author of poetry and fiction. Her work has frequently been broadcast on ABC-Radio National, and her books include How to Conceive of
- [Patrick Dubost](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/patrick-dubost-2/) - French poet, play and puppet play writer, Is the author of more than 30 books and 2 C.Ds. He studied mathmatics and mucicology. Publishes at age 24, he started to pen poems not only on paper but through sounds in electroacoustic studios as well. (He is one of the founding members of the collective of
- [Jan Dean](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/jan-dean-2/)
- [Chris Mansell](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/chris-mansell-2/) - There are two characters in this new collection from Flying Islands: the fox, and the farmer. They are opposed but share an existential problem. The more charismatic figure is the fox (female, only once owning 'vixen') who is trying to understand her environment, the role of the farmer, the singing fences, the farmer. The farmer
- [Andres Ajens](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/andres-ajens-2/)
- [Robert Edmonds](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/robert-edmonds-2/) - Hello there, Flying Islanders! My first poetry collection – Gravity Doesn’t Always Work – got its soft launch at Kit’s Markwell Poet’s Picnic in December 2020 and is slated for launch in Sydney in February 2021. I’ve been published hither and thither a little bit, and had a couple of nice moments – Jack’s Pack was long-listed for the
- [Patricia Sykes](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/patricia-sykes-2/) - Patricia Sykes is a poet and librettist. Her poems and collections have received various nominations and awards, including the Newcastle Poetry Prize, John Shaw Neilson award and the Tom Howard Poetry Prize. Shortlisting include the Anne Elder, Mary Gilmore, and Judith Wright Awards. She has read her work widely, including on Australian, Paris and New
- [Danny Gentile](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/danny-gentile-2/)
- [Pam Brown](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/pam-brown-2/) - Pam Brown was born in Seymour, Victoria. Most of her childhood was spent on military bases in Toowoomba and Brisbane. Since her early twenties, she has lived in Melbourne and Adelaide and has travelled widely in the Pacific and Indian Ocean regions as well as Europe and the U.S., but mostly she has lived in Sydney. She has made her living variously
- [Iris Fan Xing](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/iris-fan-xing/)
- [Lucy Dougan](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/lucy-dougan/)
- [Melinda Louise Smith](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/melinda-louise-smith/)
- [Anne Walsh](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/anne-walsh-2/)
- [Huang Lihai](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/huang-lihai/)
- [Phil Hammial](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/phil-hammial/)
- [Ross Donlon](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/ross-donlon-2/) - Born in Ashfield, Sydney and now living in Castlemaine, Victoria, Ross Donlon has published five collections of poetry and a number of chapbooks. First published in The Bulletin in his teens, he enjoyed (you might say) a long break of over thirty years before publishing again, a second budding, as Judith Rodriguez once said. After
- [Failure to Launch](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/failure-to-launch-2/) - They perform funny songs and witty and award-winning poetry but can they actually get their books off the ground? Robert Edmonds is a writer/comic performer whose poetry has been published many times and has been nominated for and won prizes, but Gravity Doesn’t Always Work is his first collection. Clark Gormley is a writer/singer/comedian who has performed one-man
- [Candy Tang Ting](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/candy-tang-ting/)
- [Camellia Wei](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/camellia-wei/)
- [Toby Fitch](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/toby-fitch-2/)
- [Mark Tredinnick](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/mark-tredinnick/)
- [Gillian Swain](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/gillian-swain-2/) - Gillian Swain My Skin its own Sky (Flying Islands Press 2019) is Gillian Swain’s first book, following the chap-book Sang Up (Picaro Press, 2001). Gillian’s poetry is published in various anthologies including A Slow Combusting Hymn (ASM & Cerberus Press, 2014), The Grieve Anthology (Hunter Writers Centre, 2014; 2019) and some journals including Burrow #1 (Old Water Rat Publishing, 2020), and the
- [Papa Osmubal](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/papa-osmubal-2/)
- [Richard Tipping](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/richard-tipping-2/) - Richard Tipping’s Instant History is a treasure trove of uncollected and new work, in two parts. The Postcard Life brings intense responses to travel in fifteen countries in the 1970s and 1980s. From a meeting with the Empress of Iran, to sailing along the coast of Mexico; from tongue-twists in Tipperary to Vipassana meditation in the Sierras;
- [Chan Lai Kuen](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/chan-lai-kuen-2/)
- [Acoustemology](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/acoustemology/) - Acoustemology for J.L. (and Necks fans everywhere)Looking out into a forest of flowering Pink Bloodwoodsand peeling Blackbutts, I hear Vertigo for the first time. Two decades after Sex the usual groove is bushwhackedby a tinker’s percussion and electronics out of the
- [Flying Islands Sydney Booklaunch (of the new pocket poets) on Sunday 21st, February, 2021](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/flying-islands-sydney-booklaunch-of-the-new-pocket-poets-on-sunday-21st-february-2021/)
- [Today (Feb 2) is World Wetlands day](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/today-feb-2-is-world-wetlands-day/) - Today (Feb 2) is World Wetlands day In response to your comment yesterday Kit, I was down among the mangroves early, and could hear the Great Egret's feet sucking on the sand/mud at each step.FYI. Your beauty (a credit to Grinling Gibbons' limewood work) is a Double Drummer, our largest and loudest (earplugs needed up here on
- [cicada summer in the sunny south --  Kit Kelen's response to John Bennett's 'Acoustemology'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/cicada-summer-in-the-sunny-south-kit-kelens-response-to-john-bennetts-acoustemology/) - cicada summer in the sunny south it is a wooded tinnitus and cast eyes down or grey how do they see? Black Prince with tymbals as to masque or tournament thinking's all apocalyptic you bucket it out like a miser to float through the garden like a veil of wing
- [is this the Azure Kingfisher?](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/is-this-the-azure-kingfisher/) - poor little fellah, beak still straight the kingfisher dead outside at the foot of the window has made another world
- [Magdalena's response to "Is this the Azure Kingfisher"](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/magdalenas-response-to-is-this-the-azure-kingfisher/) - AzureBiałowieża Forest, primevalweaving dark foliage through her dreams.There were no words for the smellor feel of soft moss on a fallen trunk.It lived nowhere nowexcept her childhoodwhich was not a placeor even a time anymorelost in a humectant bubbletimewarp.Nothing could be more permanentthan something lostthe Azure Tit she once foundits tiny white bellystill warmthe soft blue
- [Adam Aitken](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/adam-aitken/) - Hi, I'll be active in this community in the near future.Adam Aitken is a poet and non-fiction writer born in London and now lives in Sydney. He spent his early childhood in Thailand and Malaysia, and has worked for extensive periods teaching English in Indonesia. He is the author of five full length collections of
- [Beatrice Machet -- Short poems written on two collages](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/beatrice-machet-short-poems-written-on-two-collages/) - Short poems written on two collagesune usure fertilela profusion crépusculairedans les vastes étendues s’affairejusqu’à polir des joyauxbijoux du tempsdéposés sur la frichea fertile wearing offthe twilight profusionbusies itself in vast spacestill it polishes gemstime jewelslaid down on fallow field fenêtre sur un lac intérieurplongée verticale sur un champ de vuelumière profondémentintensément étaleNarcisse dans un coin de
- [Responding to Beatrice Machet’s ‘written on two collages’](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/responding-to-beatrice-machets-written-on-two-collages/) - clad in a vanishing one room of the sea where the singing drowned wake knowing a beach washed there each chamber set to its different time and catch along the corridor like fate age each clouds all too telling are they more smoke than bone? in a garden where time
- [in a time of lockdown](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/2064-2/) - Brian Purcellin a time of lockdown I walk out in clear air that moments ago was filled with rain catch a face at a window filled with terror streets that were jammed with cars now empty neon lights of a café closed for weeks beat ‘open now’ a shape moves
- [Suitcase Found](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/suitcase-found/) - Little box of bonesraped and smothered(if that was the order) packed in a suitcase like a ventriloquist doll left by a desert highwaya thousand miles from homea little mummy ripenedin sweltered undiscovery years longer than your life had been.No one missed you.Raised and used like veal.Your mother no help. She dead already in a
- [destination Belanglo](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/destination-belanglo/) - destination Belanglo responding to Tug’s the Belanglo joke: coming through the forest at dusk, the hitchhiker says to Ivan, ‘it’s getting dark and scary in here’. Ivan replies, ’You’re scared? I’m the one who has to walk back on my own’ it’s always coincidence brings us atoms to the cell moments pile
- [Failure to Launch](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/failure-to-launch/) - Will they fail without Miss Jane to hold their hands? Find out at upcoming shows at Newcastle Fringe and Wollombi in March.https://www.clarkgormley.com/clarks-gigs
- [BE-FORE -- AVANT](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/be-fore-avant/) - Responding to Brian Purcell's "in a time of lockdown" Before by Béatrice Machet when it doesn’t mean in front when it doesn’t show ahead when it looks back towards earlier these « before » times were they more happy the before masks the before not only perinatal and neonatal asphyxia but also before premature and
- [Responding to   BE-FORE -- AVANT by Beatrice Machet](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/2056-2/) - Responding to BE-FORE -- AVANT by Beatrice MachetThank you, Beatrice, for your poem responding to mine, which is a distinct poem in itself. Like mine, yours raises questions about how to respond to this crisis. We are lucky in Australia to have largely avoided the death toll and unbearable suffering experienced in much of the world,
- [the recent burials](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/2055-2/) - Inspired by 'Is this the Azure Kingfisher' Sarah St Vincent Welchthe recent burials last year it was a friend's dogold fella still warmher child’s best friendone of her familybundled and wrapped we were weakthe soil claywe smiled at just how weakwe were my cracking body could still pick axe with a shallow swingchisel head draginto fractured rock we made a superficial
- [roadkill - responding to Sarah St Vincent Welch's 'the recent burials'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/roadkill-responding-to-sarah-st-vincent-welchs-the-recent-burials/) - roadkill responding to Sarah’s ‘the recent burials’ wallaby gone when we came back with rifle so push off the tar and days watch by, summer fast yd hardly see the crows, or who were they (?) driving by each day dog of my childhood in a backyard gone and the time capsules (late
- [Carol Archer introducing a recent etching](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/carol-archer-introducing-a-recent-etching/) - Carol Archer, 2020. Sandstone Walk (after the fires), aluminium etching.
- [KING OF THE WORLD - ROI DU MONDE](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/king-of-the-world-roi-du-monde/) - Responding to Carol Archer’s Sandstone Walk (don’k ask me how this « story » came to my mind !! I guess it’s a mix of testimonies and readings I’ve stored somewhere in my memory and consciousness…) Delivered on the shoulder of the road you tumble down a landfill to end up in a lukewarm puddle
- [Love Poem](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/2049-2/) - Love poem 13 Feb 2021I am relieving myself, a natural start to a new dayover Japanese Irises, watching a low, sharp light tightly focused by the foliage, solar rays must be photons not waves. This red eye rising over the raucous ocean gives us everything, even the BCC cut out of my back a couple
- [responding to John Bennett's love poem](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/responding-to-john-bennetts-love-poem/) - the legislators acknowledged at last having expelled all thoughts of republic peace declared universally with every kind of song and dance guardians tickled to a fit esperanto everyone listens we take turns money’s abolished the budget is openmachines, but only if they’re fun everyone will get enough sleep, cuddles, sweetmeats, admiration and every tree may grow
- [found poem: in response to carol archer's aluminum etching 'sandstone walk (after the fires)'](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/found-poem-in-response-to-carol-archers-aluminum-etching-sandstone-walk-after-the-fires/)
- [the shadows: responding to Carol Archer’s aluminium etching ‘Sandstone Walk (after the fires)’](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/the-shadows-responding-to-carol-archers-aluminium-etching-sandstone-walk-after-the-fires/)
- [papa osmubal: introducing 'doors to both worlds', a recent work](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/papa-osmubal-introducing-doors-to-both-worlds-a-recent-work/) - 'Doors to Both Worlds' is mixed media (collage and Chinese ink). It was exhibited in Macau at a collective exhibition called 'Unlock That Door', on August 28-September 19, 2020, in celebration of the 17th anniversary of Creative Macau-Center for Creative Industries (CCI). (-papa osmubal) -----
- [ONE SLEEP TO GO! Launch February 2021](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/one-sleep-to-go/)
- [Rob Schackne #1 - The Sound of Wind on Mars](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/rob-schackne-1-the-sound-of-wind-on-mars/) - The Sound of Wind on MarsVaster quarantine the expanse of spaceoff canvas out of viewcan't be understood then the earshot comesto restless earthlingsa twelve-minute delaythe sound of wind on Marsno machinery of warno armies clanking armor no shouts of murder only the presenceof extinction and hard-won peaceunder threat again
- [Flying Islands launch February 2021 photos(by Adam)](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/flying-islands-launch-photosby-adam/)
- [Spruce](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/spruce/) - Check the neatnessof the homeless under Glebe rail bridge - to each their own arch open plan, plein air here a brushed tent a swag-bed rolled camp bed made cardboard pantry wardrobe trolley. Minimilists before their time. A ragman's bike a spirit cooker ... what's to declutter? what forsake? Arty bastards. yes
- [Paintings by Brian Purcell](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/1945-2/) - Future Flying Islands' poet Brian Purcell has his first solo exhibition of paintings up now! 'The Day on Fire' is on at The Shop Gallery, 112 Glebe Point Rd, Glebe, 11am to 6pm every day until Wednesday 3rd March. Brian is at the gallery during those hours, so please drop in for a chat or a
- [Rob Schackne #2 - Raindrop Look](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/rob-schackne-2-raindrop-look/) - Raindrop LookRaindrop lookfind puddle findfish and miseryhow it falls downpast the kinglyand the queenlythat good ringof rivernighta drip of presencea second of gracemap a miracleread me umbrellaloaves and fishesbless our soulswe'll get it right
- [Beyond (in response to Papa Osmubal’s mixed media work ‘Doors to Both Worlds’)        – Lou Smith](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/beyond-in-response-to-papa-osmubals-mixed-media-work-doors-to-both-worlds-lou-smith/) - Will you still write to me, when you are gone?Which door shall I open to find you?a skeleton key mellifluous songnot milled from nickel and silver will your breath still cloud in the cold, cold air,for a moment as if we are gods?s w o o p
- [a door in the day - for Lou Smith](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/a-door-in-the-day-for-lou-smith/) - a door in the day for Lou Smith none thought to lock bring the bonescome flesh do come in you’re welcome say I, the inhabited fancy step through the city take this pill, melt a fall of sunlight here just where the day grows over come seasons, turn roller skates prepare me a piano please or
- [Acrocorinth](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/1936-2/) - Hello Flying Islanders!I'm very excited to have been warmly welcomed into this community and blogosphere as an honorary member after launching Steve Armstrong's latest pocket book of poetry What's Left.I'm a poet, and emerging literary critic, living on Darkinjung country on the Central Coast of NSW. My chapbook, A Fistful of Hail, was published by Vagabond
- [Rob Schackne #3 - The River](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/rob-schackne-3-the-river/) - The RiverToday he wrote a riverits eddies wore strange markson a flowing page, boulderssemi-submerged like hymnsthe banks were huge, the plainswent on for miles of wordsoddly discernible, then not—balanced an enormous spherethat was empty of meaningoverseeing the asemic, butnot nothing, not nothing therea peace, a better silencewe wrote it together.Drawing "Oggi ho scritto un fiume”
- [Photos from Flying Islands Glebe Launch February 2021](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/photos-from-flying-islands-glebe-launch/)
- [Kit Kelen's 'Whack & Blight' Poetry Exhibition in Glebe (at the Shop Gallery)](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/kit-kelens-whack-blight-poetry-exhibition-in-glebe-at-the-shop-gallery/)
- [myth of a-semism](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/myth-of-a-semism/) - myth of a-semism there is no mark without meaning neither made nor found try to make nonsense go on those who set out do just that they have tumbled an ark into stone they this that here’s the picture of nothing at all it’s tinkle whiff the chimney slept the
- [standing still the trees: works on paper by Carol Archer](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/standing-still-the-trees-works-on-paper-by-carol-archer/) - Archer’s drawings and prints celebrate the sense of immersion and wonder one feels when standing with trees. Meanderings near the artist’s home in the Myall Lakes region of N.S.W. and further afield have moved the artist to make these pictures. A preoccupation with light suggests the ephemerality of human perception. The viewpoint, towards ground rather than sky, underlines trees’
- [good old summer](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/1928-2/) - Kia ora ki katoa [Greetings to all].Cornered by Coronavirus here in Aotearoa New Zealand, I wonder if any other Flying Islands contributors are Kiwi and might wish to share a reading, even if it is via Zoom...? Looks like we will be here for a while, despite escape plans being drawn...Meanwhile a poem to warm
- [4 bits that may or may not end up going somewhere](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/4-bits-that-may-or-may-not-end-up-going-somewhere/) - Goths are having a séance in the Cubby House at Bunnings. There are Skinheads in the Potting Mix. Hipsters cook cow penises at the sausage sizzle. Lowest prices are just the beginning. * Epistemological, Ontological … I look these words up every six months. But I still don’t know what they mean,
- [Rob Schackne #4 - Sappho](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/rob-schackne-4-sappho/) - SapphoSappho my exceptionthe first female voicejust enough the fragmentsloud all you left usstructure of skeletonlines you wrote the missingreversed reflected undimmedthis forever on the outsidethis sleeve all these heartsafter sunset the weddinghow much you taught uspantelos mikra melaina
- [the Clive Palmer Monument](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/the-clive-palmer-monument/) - the Clive Palmer Monument will be smaller than life and careless thereof… it fronts the museum of where the workers were never paid what they are owed’s colossal! some say kitsch and some grotesque something for everyone dinosaur bones! both thumbs up loves a lie things he touches turn to shit
- [SUBMISSION CALL](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/submission-call/)
- [Poem written on the back of the boarding pass](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/1918-2/) - World Poetry day today‘It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.’ WCW Flight QF 2101 8.3.2021 Extract Poem written on the back of the boarding passFrom the air, creeks reveal themselves,
- [these flying islands](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/these-flying-islands/) - these flying islands gone like a cool breeze frisbee free strophe propelled canvas a range of opinion idea thrust pastoral comical tragical hello find you here in if you like a conversation that’s it lean in with tip till keep a grip let the string out breeze take beats
- [Ecology Collage Series...](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/ecology-collage-series/) - Ecology Collage Seriesrewriting the order of the anthropocene“Ecology” comes from the Greek oikos meaning “house, dwelling place, habitation” and logia meaning “study of”.Traversing themes of art, literature, nature, society, technology, science and religion, Arthur Mee’s Children's Encyclopedias (circa 1960s) remain an unsettling testimony to the ongoing destruction of our original home—Earth—as they extol the virtues of Man, his paradoxical
- [The hornbill observation station         The Straits of Malacca](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/1911-2/) - After reading Kit's these flying islands and misreading Hornbill for Hornball (Kit's poems flow quickly, like the stream that has appeared in our garden) and Hornbills have a rasping sound a little like cicadas)Poem written 2019. 'Sail on’ Wolf and GinaThe hornbill observation station The Straits of Malacca They are seated stoned, gazing on blue vibrations inlaid with shallow
- [Nunggak Semi: A tribute book to Iman Budhi Santosa](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/nunggak-semi-a-tribute-book-to-iman-budhi-santosa-2/) - To commemorate 100 days of Iman Budhi Santosa's death (one of the Flying Island poets), a group of poets and writers in Yogyakarta lauches a tribute book entitled Nunggak Semi: Dunia Iman Budhi Santosa (Nunggak Semi: The world of Iman Budhi Santosa). With the contributions from eighty five poets, playwrights, painters, journalist, editors, and academicians, this
- [Rob Schackne #5 - The Work](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/rob-schackne-5-the-work/) - The Work for Tie WuLet me hold this brushand I will rememberthe drops of waterupon the white paperwatch the water strokesdisappear like Springlet me hold my breatha cloud begins to formI remember emptinesshow it looked beforethe way it later waslet me do this again
- [Newry State Forest, 31 March](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/1906-2/) - Newry State Forest, 31 March‘Destruction of world’s forests increased sharply in 2020’. The Guardian, 31.3.2021‘simply squint/ till words do as bid.’ Kit Kelen Checking GIS coordinates, but which coupe? In search for the endangered Scrub Turpentine and the Native Guava shrub, bush bashingjust find a cicada casing with a Lantana floret.Neanderthals took care of the sick and the
- [CALL IT   -THING (L'appeler   -chose)](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/call-it-thing-lappeler-chose/) - After a drawing by Anny Pelouze which title is « Eclats de temps » ( splinters of time) Call it -thing Before there was any thing there must have been some thing. It might have been a mere only thing an essential thing not a whatever thing Some call it Motion others call
- [Rob Schackne #6 - Home Before Daylight](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/rob-schackne-6-home-before-daylight/) - Home Before DaylightFallen, whether failure or lossthe centre never held, nowthat your name is invisiblethe numbers are many— dirty jackets, unscrubbed facesgetting home before daylight sunflowers without any sunscreaming at what isn't therewatching the short ride fast approach the ground— good that you have companygood the dark one's not interested
- [Thanks Kit from Dave Hill](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/thanks-kit-from-dave-hill/) - Appreciate this expression avenue you've provided. Just retired in Macau after 39 years in and around int'l college teaching, did Creative Writing with Levine, Everwine and Co. in Fresno late 80's, born/raised among Yoruba in Africa. Here's a pic and a poem. Dave Hill IF YOU'RE LIKE ME Well.. you are and you aren’t. Example,
- [Rob Schackne #7 - Love Close](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/rob-schackne-7-love-close/) - Love CloseI used to believe my bodywas a traitor, it had betrayedmy orders to live foreverpieces have gone missingin a temple full of dirty coinsand now the smell is oldwas there sanctity in decaymight I yet turn it, to serveenergies that still remainah I didn’t recognise it beforebody, my body thought differentlyand where it went
- [Common or Garden Poets](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/common-or-garden-poets/) - An Introduction to Common or Garden PoetsCommon or Garden Poets is an open-ended and ongoing Flying Islands Poetry Community initiative. It’s a conversation in poetry, of any kind; poetry, in some way, concerning the garden.It’s a very simple project. Here’s how it works.We come into this garden of letters one at a time. That means one
- [Common or Garden Poets - Post #1 - Kit Kelen inviting Jean Kent](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/common-or-garden-poets-post-1-kit-kelen-inviting-jean-kent/) - secret no one can keep for Jean Kent and now everyone knows it’s the longer light the mud to life (a theory once) how dare and flirt first thing from the veranda an orchestra tuning instruments of bright nor anything regular intended feathers carry word (which isn’t) insects cone up, gyre like motes can’t help the odd paint splash
- [Common or Garden Poets - Post #2 - Jean Kent inviting Gail Hennessy](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/common-or-garden-poets-post-2-jean-kent-inviting-gail-hennessy/) - In my Mother’s Garden for Gail Hennessy first thing from the veranda an orchestra tuning instruments of bright … Kit Kelen, ‘secret no one can keep’ For an hour before dawn a secret bird practises its song. Nine notes, a melody neat as an artlessly tied silk scarf, too quicky looped & flung
- [Newcastle Poetry Prize 2021 - five flying islanders shortlisted, two on the prize list](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/newcastle-poetry-prize-2021-five-flying-islanders-shortlisted-two-on-the-prize-list/)
- [Common or Garden Poets #3 - Gail Hennessy inviting Kathryn Fry](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/common-or-garden-poets-3-gail-hennessy-inviting-kathryn-fry/) - Our Eclectic Garden for Kathryn Fry Under the curtaining wisteria who will take banana peel to the orchids? Who will shiver the dew over the freesias and the thryptomene? Jean Kent, ‘In My Mother’s Garden’ for every house called home there is a frame with you the constant gardener
- [Common or Garden Poets #4 - Kathryn Fry inviting Jill McKeowen](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/common-or-garden-poets-4-kathryn-fry-inviting-jill-mckeowen/) - Impromptu for Jill McKeowen our place in the connectedness of things Gail Hennessy, ‘Our Eclectic Garden’
- [common or garden poets #5 - Jill McKeowen inviting Irina Frolova](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/common-or-garden-poets-5-jill-mckeowen-inviting-irina-frolova/) - suburban garden song for Irina Frolova…songs that save us……the slow luscious note of gardeniasKathryn Fry, ‘Impromptu’ the koel song has arrived, rolling from the leafy night as wattle bird cracks the dawnstep outto the warming world, crimson lanterns of bottlebrush litin a thousand filaments overnight the young orbhas hung its web, renewal glisteningfrom awning to gardenia on
- [common or garden poets #6 - Irina Frolova inviting Gillian Swain](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/common-or-garden-poets-6-irina-frolova-inviting-gillian-swain/) - Lightlyfor Gillian Swain…the garden guides us…says this is how it feels to be aliveJill McKeowen, ‘suburban garden song’ November’s whites & greys a melting memorytoday the purpleand the scarlet bellsring in the summer’s reignI wander through the gardenbetween the worlds of losing and findingthe jacaranda beginsto fade and scatterthe Flame trees’ fireworks go offthe ground stickywith
- [Common or garden poets #7 Gillian Swain  inviting Magdalena Ball](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/common-or-garden-poets-7-gillian-swain-inviting-magdalena-ball/) - Garden Poem for Magdalena Ball ...today the purple
- [Common or garden poets #8 Magdalena Ball inviting Morgan Bell](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/common-or-garden-poets-8-magdalena-ball-inviting-morgan-bell/) - False Promise on PetalsFor Morgan Bell'Train your eyeslalom through sunset websLearn quickly.' Gillian Swain, "Garden Poem"Evening pours in taking everyone by surprise. It’s always the wayheavy and wet, dirt flowing like everything you ever neededbut too much all at oncethe zucchinis are King Midaswithering in their own liquid goldpotatoes are corrupted, their broken bodiespurple gemstones, bleeding into the earthcucumbers
- [Video premiere -  December 19th 2021](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/video-premiere-december-19th/) - To mark the soft launch of this year's 8 titles and to give fellow poets and poetry lovers a taste of the work contained within we have timed the premiere of 4 videos (and any others received between now and the 19th) on the Flying Island Youtube channel for the evening of December 19. Details
- [Common or garden poets #9 Morgan Bell inviting Jan Dean](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/common-or-garden-poets-9-morgan-bell-inviting-jan-dean/) - The Grave For Jan Dean “the zucchinis are King Midas withering in their own liquid gold” Magdalena Ball, ‘False Promise on Petals’ a backyard is a cemetery. there are tiny bones down there. bones of birds and mice and skinks. each year they subside further into the sandy soil. if you
- [Common or Garden Poets #10 - Jan Dean inviting Peter Wells](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/common-or-garden-poets-10-jan-dean-inviting-peter-wells/) - This Festive SeasonFor Peter Wells ‘you will always be/ that sole cigarette emberon a summer night/ blending into the wilds of the garden you planted behind a sentinel of spiders’ — Morgan Bell Top heavy, agapanthus, heralds of the seasonkiss the ground at the front of our houseafter so much unseasonal rain and seasonal sunshine. Next door has blue
- [Common or Garden Poets #11 - Kit Kelen inviting Angela Costi](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/common-or-garden-poets-11-kit-kelen-inviting-angela-costi/) - inviting Angela Costi fragments revised from ‘the village is a garden’ at Mesana Paphos District, Cyprus and I have something to tell you which not even I must hear – Yiannis Ritsos 1 such an honest morning sun has washed white what is that tiny bird swings
- [Common of Garden Poets #12 - Kerri Shying](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/common-of-garden-poets-12-kerri-shying/) - Where the bees rest where the butterflies play “What we most need to do is to hear within us the sounds of the
- [Jane Skelton - My chapbook 'Chimera' of poetry and prose was published late last year (2020)](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/jane-skelton-my-chapbook-chimera-of-poetry-and-prose-was-published-late-last-year-2020/) - My chapbook 'Chimera' of poetry and prose was published by Rochford Press late last year. It is beautifully illustrated by Louise Kerr. If you'd like to purchase a copy, here is the link:
- [Common or Garden Poets #13 – Angela Costi inviting Denise O'Hagan](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/common-or-garden-poets-13-angela-costi-inviting-denise-ohagan/) - The Apricot & The Lemon Tree at the edge of the villagecome to an oak much older than methat’s where I’ll seek advice– Kit Kelen tenant 1 planted the couple while tenant 2 and 3nurtured their growth and here I stand, tenant 4before their arthritic leaves & brittle branches unlike the owl and the pussycat they are stucktoo close
- [Ask a Provocative Question- but no philosophy, dig?](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/1893-2/) - Ask a Provocative Question- but no philosphy, dig? Or were you doing something else seriously? What would there otherwise be sans keeping us guessing? Curiosity: not something to lack, just a refusal to implement, momemt? This ought to be a call to action! No, philosophy is all, so stop doing the wiggleworm will you? A
- [one of these days we'll be discovered](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/one-of-these-days-well-be-discovered/) - one of these days we will be discovered little corner, too much information then it will be as if we were sought though that cannot be the case some ones will come here to this place which isn’t one at all and ear to the soil of our saying one of these days we’ll go through
- [Sarah St Vincent Welch  magnetic fridge poem in New Zealand vernacular with husband's mug shot a yoghurt smear and a baby photo](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/sarah-st-vincent-welch-magnetic-fridge-poem-in-new-zealand-vernacular-with-husbands-mug-shot-a-yoghurt-smear-and-a-baby-photo/)
- [Rob Schackne #8 - Insomnia](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/rob-schackne-8-insomnia/) - InsomniaThey walk at nightin this old cottageabove in the raftersa ceiling of richesbelow the floorboardswhere it wasn’t buriedthey whisper in the wallit was taken fromsome call them ghostor possums strollingthe length of the housenorth to south and backask if they’re friendlythe hurt feelingsall in a dreamwhat do they sayI listen to them chatterof poison and
- [This your Life? Or not?](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/this-your-life-or-not/) - Standing there muttering on the phone, mattering as if you do, buses rattling and squealing, drills and picks demolishing and constructing who knows what. The din! Dusty umbrellas line the market lanes where granny shuffles past scraping her feet- not really meaning to be here. Frowning mothers drag their skipping, dancing daughters to lessons on
- [actually I lived here once](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/actually-i-lived-here-once/) - just because you ask
- [poem in the fridge (for Sarah)](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/poem-in-the-fridge-for-sarah/) - poem in the fridge for Sarah St Vincent Welch things opened are in here the can of worms, the ointment fly stool samples, acid trips, specimens all sorts, oh and did I mention dinner? voice says ‘we are your dead in here’ the feast preserved , slow cultures cut off from nature
- [PRIDE COMES BEFORE A FALL (FLOWER OF KENT)  by Béatrice Machet](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/pride-comes-before-a-fall-flower-of-kent-by-beatrice-machet/) - Answering, or rather echoing Kit Kelen's poem #510 -- edge-phobe's (things fall off) ( The DailyKit) [after an older version posted on 365+1 project ] PRIDE COMES BEFORE A FALL It’s no myth. Flower of Kent is an apple. It could have been a name for the Full Moon if Newton had been
- [at the Flying Islands showcase/booklaunch at the Maitland IF Festival this last weekend](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/at-the-flying-islands-showcase-booklaunch-at-the-maitland-if-festival-this-last-weekend/)
- [Not Me](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/not-me/) - that wasn't me carrying around town a big old bag of spark plugs to give more fire to engines that aren't even mine, that I'll never hear or see... that wasn't me
- [Travel of Questions](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/travel-of-questions/) - still sleepy, reluctant/ but already we're rising above the city/ easy still to make out the blockades below/ trouble in the streets down there/ next to us a man reads Leviticus aloud/ headline: prominent Chelsea backer is no more/ gate number announced sans flight details/ red wine or white? asks the lady with a sincerely
- [killing my commas softly (Sarah St Vincent Welch)](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/1859-2/) - killing my commas softly (Sarah St Vincent Welch)enamoured of the pausethe dawdling the adding onthe lists, the enjambentforced, I admit less in lovewith the arguments the rulesthe haughtiness of editors(not poetry editors, mind you)my prosey report editing colleaguesholding up a falling edificeby themselves the massesrevoltingthe commas in their iron heartsthe comma the most weaponisedof all punctuationaimed
- [Lockdown blog](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/lockdown-blog/) - Stuck in Sydney in the family home, I've begun a daily blog inspired by my daily walks through the nearby Dame Eadith Walker Estate. Here's a sample.PrefaceThe Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne by Gilbert White (1720-1793) has provided both an inspiration and a template for this lockdown blog. The following has been lifted directly from this
- [what shall we do nest year?](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/what-shall-we-do-nest-year/) - what shall we do nest year? for Sarah St Vincent Welch when every month’s of Sundays and all the moons are blue a peach blossom wild creek tangle with ferns we will live in a typographical error and go to press that way chorus of twig and leaf to prove the
- [How Would You Like...](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/how-would-you-like/) - Everyone's a transplant and an amalgam-- Alloy, usually hardened. Yet getting pliable and vulnerable is suggested - recommended. We know better than to require the exigent. Rebellious help is not help: just ask my friend the restauranteur. The food is fusion but the help is fission. Our way of getting through all this mixing and
- [Alloy, Usually Hardened response to “How Would You Like…”)](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/1850-2/) - Alloy, Usually Hardened (response to "How Would You Like...") This is what you call joy created through an amalgam of death and rhythm an admixture of metals in a city nothing more than concrete and dreams built from frozen seconds. Kodak Instamatic, a birthday gift which only captured black and white. I could tell from
- [The Unlearner](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/the-unlearner/) - How many times has it looked like the end...no way around or across? Three thousand and a half weeks Navigating sundowns, we're still crossing over from morning wondering what the hell to learn, and how much was forgotten- Or bloody well should have been
- [FIVE FLYING ISLANDERS SHORTLISTED FOR THIS YEAR'S NEWCASTLE POETRY PRIZE!](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/five-flying-islanders-shortlisted-for-this-years-newcastle-poetry-prize/) - 2021 Newcastle Poetry Prize$25,000 Prize Pooland the opportunity to be published in the 2021 anthologyHere is the list of poets (in alpha order) to be published in the 2021 anthology.Prizes will be announced in October. ClaireAlbrechtI have become psychologically linked to a humpback whale NSWNatalia FigueroaBarrosaRoadtrip NSWLachlanBrownAny Saturday, 2021: Running Westward NSWGayeleneCarbisAfter ‘Still Life with Babette’s Jug #2’ VICEileenChongPoem for
- [Oh Terrific](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/oh-terrific/) - So now they tell me business is business, sometimes up sometimes down that's the breaks, it's just how it crumbles so many sayings, turnoff tropes to suppress the outrage to discount further cheap antics, the raw peeling of layer under layer of ripoff, of ruin: "Not to worry she's dancing in heaven" we look down
- [from Judy Johnson’s "Exhibit"](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/from-judy-johnsons-exhibit/) - Cliff Walk Cliff wind has a particular whistling sound like a gas bottle released a quarter turn – gulls tumble in its slipstream wallabies are fastened to the grass by their ears. Here on the high side we squint the miles of absolute blue and watch the white knots of diving birds unravelling to stitch
- [from Alex Skovron’s "Water Music" - Sunspots](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/from-alex-skovrons-water-music-sunspots/) - The people have filled the city’s open spaces, they stand shoulder to shoulder, expecting everything. The platform above the Square is empty. A buzz of unease caresses the bare heads, their coronas of hair thinning into the breeze; see the rolled-up newspapers, the scarves that twitch. The hum mounts to a whisper, the whisper delivers
- [from Odveig Klyve’s "Let’s Take the Blue Sky by Storm"](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/from-odveig-klyves-lets-take-the-blue-sky-by-storm/) - rivers are urgent for the sea bringing letters from winter the farmer writes to a summer with his shovel in wet mold the clouds gather what is not yet said (translated by Kit Kelen with the author)
- [Save the Date Saturday 12 February 2022](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/save-the-date-sunday-23-january-2022/) - Launch of the new series of Flying Islands Pocket Poetry books is scheduled for Saturday 12 February 2022 at 2 PM at the Shop Gallery, 112 Glebe Point Road, Glebe The launch coincides with the Flying Islands Benefit Exhibition, running from 11am - 6pm, 10-16 February 2022. The hope is to raise funds for the
- [Rae Desmond Jones’ ‘Decline and Fall’](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/rae-desmond-jones-decline-and-fall/) - i hate them the truth is out. and they hate me. them, the barbarians in baseballs hats, twisting in chairs lined up in artificial order, and carving their loathing on the tabletops. do you know why the roman empire fell? I ask. who cares? a boy giggles. that is the reason, i say you are
- [Ross Donlon](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/ross-donlon/) - Ross Donlon is a poet, born in Sydney, who now lives in Castlemaine, Victoria. He is widely published in Australia & also in Ireland. He was awarded the Varuna Dorothy Hewett Flagship Fellowship in 2010 and has won two international poetry competitions, The Wenlock Poetry Festival Competition (under the auspices of the Arvon Foundation) &
- [Susan Fealy](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/susan-fealy/) - Susan Fealy is a Melbourne-based poet, reviewer and clinical psychologist. Her poems have been published in Australian journals and anthologies including Best Australian Poems 2009, 2010, 2013 and 2017. Others appear in the United States, India and Sweden. Among awards for her poetry are the NSW Society of Women Writers National Poetry Prize and the Henry Kendall Poetry Award. Her first collection, Flute
- [Robert Edmonds](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/robert-edmonds/) - Robert Edmonds is a poet, psychologist and clown doctor whose work has appeared in many publications. In 2016 he was longlisted for The University of Canberra Vice Chancellor’sInternational Poetry Prize. In 2020 he won third prize in the $25,000 Newcastle Poetry Prize. His first poetry collection Gravity Doesn’t Always Work was published by Flying Island
- [Clark Gormley](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/clarke-gormley/) - Clark Gormley is a poet and singer-songwriter based in Newcastle. He has been heavily involved in organising and promoting local poetry readings for over 20 years. He has been published in several anthologies including Visions from the Valley, A Slow Combusting Hymn and Brew: 30 Years of Poetry at the Pub Newcastle. He has written and performed three nerd-themed
- [Beth Spencer](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/beth-spencer/) - Beth Spencer is an award-winning author of poetry and fiction. Her work has frequently been broadcast on ABC-Radio National, and her books include How to Conceive of a Girl (Random House), The Party of Life (Flying Islands), Vagabondage (UWAP) and The Age of Fibs (ebook published by Spineless Wonders and winner of the 2018 Carmel
- [Iris Fan Xing   樊星：詞語的南方](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/iris-fan-xing-樊星：詞語的南方/) - Iris Fan Xing is a poet and translator who is interested in language, place, and home. She recently returned to Perth from New York City and is currently working on translations for Giramondo. The following is from an interview with liminal magazine. I grew up as an only child (like many people my age) in
- [Les Wicks](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/les-wicks/) - Over 45 years Wicks has performed widely in Australia & internationally. Published/broadcast in over 400 different channels, magazines, anthologies & newspapers across 35 countries in 15 languages. Conducts workshops around Australia, has edited various projects over the decades, latest being Guide to Sydney Crime (2022) & runs Meuse Press which focuses on poetry outreach projects
- [Nicholafei Chen    陳飛：物語獵人](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/nicholafei-chen-陳飛：物語獵人/) - In 2015 Nicholafei Chen was undertaking a Masters degree in creative writing at Macau University. He was also providing a range of translation services. Born and raised in Guizhou, Chen is a story hunter, a traveler, a graphic designer, a photographer and, most recently, a cultivator of succulent plants. This is all despite having been told
- [Danny Gentile](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/danny-gentile/) - Danny Gentile is a Newcastle-based poet, with works published in journals such as Overland, Stylus Poetry Journal, Meanjin and Southerly, and anthologies including The Best Australian Poetry 2006, The Best Australian Poems 2008, New Beginnings: An Anthology and Contemporary Australian Gay and Lesbian Poets 2009. Flying Islands Pocket Poet Publications The Icicle Tree
- [Michael Crane](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/michael-crane/) - Michael Crane is an Australian poet, writer and compere of poetry events in Melbourne. Born in Brisbane in 1961, Crane moved to Melbourne at age 18. He has been an active member of Melbourne's poetry scene, performing in many open poetry readings from 1989 to 1991. In 1991, Crane organised the first Poetry Slam to
- [Chris Mansell](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/chris-mansell/) - Chris Mansell studied Economics at the University of Sydney – because she’d read Das Kapital as a teenager and thought economics was the way to understand what is going on. She spent the first ten years of her life on the central coast of NSW, and then she moved to Niugini (Papua New Guinea). At
- [Su Qian   蘇淺：恰恰](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/su-qian-蘇淺：恰恰/) - Su Qian's biography will be updated as more information comes to light. Flying Islands Pocket Poet Publications: Moments
- [Richard Tipping](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/richard-tipping/) - Richard Kelly Tipping was born in Adelaide, South Australia and studied in humanities at Flinders University. He has lived in the USA (1974/75), and the UK and Europe (1984/86). While lecturing in media arts at the University of Newcastle he completed a doctorate at the University of Technology Sydney titled Word Art Works: visual poetry
- [Michael Brennan](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/michael-brennan/) - Michael Brennan was born in Sydney in 1973. He completed his PhD at the University of Sydney in 2001, where he wrote his thesis The Impossible Gaze: Robert Adamson and the work of negativity. He is editor of the Australian sector of Poetry International Web and is the co-founder of publisher Vagabond Press. Brennan has written six individual collections
- [Nunggak Semi: A tribute book to Iman Budhi Santosa](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/nunggak-semi-a-tribute-book-to-iman-budhi-santosa/) - To commemorate 100 days of Iman Budhi Santosa's death (one of the Flying Island poets), a group of poets and writers in Yogyakarta lauchds a tribute book entitled Nunggak Semi: Dunia Iman Budhi Santosa (Nunggak Semi: The world of Iman Budhi Santosa). With the contributions from eighty five poets, playwrights, painters, journalist, editors, and academicians, this book compiles
- [Sarah St Vincent Welch](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/sarah-st-vincent-welch/) - Sarah St Vincent Welch grew up in Sydney and was a member of No Regrets women writers workshop and the Sydney Poets Union. She has a double major and honours in English Literature from the University of Sydney. In 1987 she gained a Graduate Diploma in Media at University of Canberra (UC). She worked at
- [Chrysogonus Siddha Malilang](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/chrysogonus-siddha-malilang/) - Chrysogonus Siddha Malilang was a nomad writer and translator before finally settling in in Southern Sweden. He started writing professionally - as a journalist - at an early age of 12, mainly motivated by an innocent wish of seeing his name printed in newspaper. After writing a number of short stories for various newspapers, he
- [Rob Schackne](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/rob-schackne/) - Born in New York, he lived in many countries until Australia finally took him in. He was a Foreign Expert EFL teacher in China for many years. He now lives in Castlemaine, Victoria, where he enjoys the blue skies, fresh air and the birds. There were some extreme sports once; now he plays (mostly) respectable
- [David McAleavey](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/david-mcaleavey/) - David McAleavey was born in Kansas in 1946. He has published seven poetry collections, including Sterling 403 (1971), David McAleavey’s Greatest Hits 1971-2000 (2001), and most recently Rock Taught (2016). His honors include a fellowship from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the GW Award from George Washington University. He currently lives in
- [Matthew Cheng  鄭政恆：記憶之中](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/matthew-cheng-鄭政恆：記憶之中/) - Matthew Cheng 鄭政恆 is a poet and editor and author of the poetry collection The First Book of Recollection, and co-author of Wait and See: The Collection of Six Hong Kong Young Writers, and the editor of An Anthology of Hong Kong Poetry of the 1950s, Hong Kong Short Stories 2004-2005, and Hong Kong Cinema
- [Patricia Sykes](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/patricia-sykes/) - Patricia Sykes is a poet and librettist. Her poems and collections have received various nominations and awards, including the Newcastle Poetry Prize, John Shaw Neilson award and the Tom Howard Poetry Prize. Short listings include the Anne Elder, Mary Gilmore, and Judith Wright Awards. She has read her work widely, including on Australian, Paris and
- [Odveig Klyve](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/odveig-klyve/) - Odveig Klyve (born 29 January 1954) is a Norwegian writer and film director. Among her notable publications are Rift (poetry debut, 1993), Basunengelen (children's book, 1997), Historien om Null (children's book, 2003), Algebraisk (poetry, 2004), Det andre blikket (poetry, 2006), Sterkest – Historien om Tre (children's book, 2006) and Hemmeleg (children's book, 2007). In total
- [Gail Hennessy](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/gail-hennessy/) - Gail Hennessy was educated at Our Lady of Mercy College Cronulla and graduated from the University of Sydney with a BA degree in 1959. From 1960 to 1988 she lived and worked in Canberra with her husband and five children. During the 1970s and 1980s her poetry was widely published in regional and national newspapers
- [Magdalena Ball](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/magdalena-ball/) - Magdalena Ball is a novelist, poet, reviewer and interviewer, and is the Managing Editor of Compulsive Reader, a literary review site that has been running for some 23 years. Her interview podcast, Compulsive Reader Talks, has over 150 wonderful interviews with the likes of Maria Tumarkin, Ben Okri, and John Banville, to name just a
- [Cui Yuwei  葦歡：刺](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/cui-yuwei-葦歡：刺/) - Cui Yuwei, born in 1983, is a bilingual poet and translator based in China. In 2007, she completed an MA in English Literature in Wuhan University. She has published poems in Mascara Review and Cordite Poetry Review (AU). Her works of translation appear in Off-the-Coast (US), The Sons of Camus Writers International Journal (CA) and
- [Andrew Burke](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/andrew-burke/) - In 1950, Andrew Burke wrote his first poem – in chalk on a slate board. It was variations on the letter A. In 1958 he wrote a poem modeled on Milton’s sonnet on his blindness. Luckily it is lost. In 1960 he wrote a religious play about the Apostles during the time Jesus was in
- [Anne Walsh](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/anne-walsh/) - Anne Walsh is a poet and a story writer whose work falls somewhere on the border of those two countries. She’s been shortlisted for the Newcastle Poetry Prize twice and for the ACU Prize for literature. Her first book of poems, I Love Like a Drunk Does, was published by Ginninderra Press (2009, Australia). Her
- [Alex Skovron](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/alex-skovron/) - Alex Skovron was born in Poland, lived briefly in Israel, and emigrated to Australia in 1958 aged nearly ten. His family settled in Sydney, where he grew up and completed his studies. From the early 1970s he worked as an editor for book publishers in Sydney and (after 1980) Melbourne. His poetry has appeared widely
- [Candy Tang Ting 唐婷：赤腳奔跑](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/candy-tang-ting-唐婷：赤腳奔跑/) - Candy was born in a small village in Hunan Province and lived there with her grandparents until she was eight, She then left the village and went to live with her parents in Guilin City. At the time of writing Barefoot Running she was completing a Masters degree in creative writing (2015) at the University
- [John Bennett](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/john-bennett/) - John Bennett grew up in the south of England when Red Squirrels were already becoming rare. He studied Philosophy & Sociology at university and travelled extensively before discovering Australia and settling here just over thirty years ago. He has worked at various sites including the Powerhouse Museum, NSW National Parks & Wildlife Service and Sydney
- [Greg McLaren](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/greg-mclaren/) - Greg McLaren (born 1967) is an Australian poet. Born in the New South Wales Hunter Region coalfields town, Kurri Kurri. He moved to Sydney in 1990 where he studied at the University of Sydney and in 2005 he was awarded a PhD in Australian Literature. His thesis was on Buddhist influences on the Australian poets Harold Stewart, Robert Gray and Judith Beveridge. As well as poetry, he has published reviews and criticism.
- [Alan Jefferies](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/alan-jefferies/) - Alan Jefferies grew up in Cleveland on the Queensland coast. He published his first poems in 1976 and since then his work has appeared in magazines and newspapers in Australia and overseas. He holds degrees in Communication and Writing from the University of Technology, Sydney and for many years worked as a librarian and teacher
- [Pam Brown](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/pam-brown/) - Pam Brown was born in Seymour, Victoria. Most of her childhood was spent on military bases in Toowoomba and Brisbane. Since her early twenties, she has lived in Melbourne and Adelaide, and has travelled widely in the Pacific and Indian Ocean regions as well as Europe and the U.S., but mostly she has lived in
- [Philip Hammial](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/philip-hammial/) - Philip Hammial grew up in and around Detroit, Michigan, where he spent his teenage years getting into serious trouble, a juvenile delinquent with too much imagination for his own good. After three years in the engine rooms of US Navy ships he went to Olivet College in Olivet, Michigan, and then to Ohio University in
- [Rae Desmond Jones](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/rae-desmond-jones/) - Rae Desmond Jones (11 August 1941 – 27 June 2017) was an Australian poet, novelist, short story writer and politician. Rae Desmond Jones was born in the mining town of Broken Hill in the far West of New South Wales. Although many of his poems and stories are concerned with urban experience, he always felt
- [Brian Purcell](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/brian-purcell/) - Brian Purcell is a poet and painter based in Bellingen on the mid-north coast of NSW. His first poems were published in Poetry and Audience (Leeds, UK) in the early eighties. In 1984-85 he met poets like Kit Kelen and Adam Aitken through publishing poems in Poetry Australia’s young writers’ issue, New Pressings.He became involved
- [Daniel Ionita](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/daniel-ionita/) - Daniel Ionita, born in Bucharest, Romania, teaches Organisational Improvement, part time, at the University of Technology Sydney. Over the last ten years Daniel has dedicated much of his time to poetry. He has had his own work published in both his native Romania as well as Australia and the USA. In addition, Daniel's passion has
- [Morgan Bell](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/morgan-bell/) - Morgan Bell is a Port Stephens' author of short fiction. Her books include Sniggerless Boundulations, Laissez Faire, and Intersection Control: Collected Works. She is a qualified technical writer, creative writing teacher, and editor of Sproutlings: A Compendium of Little Fictions. Her first chapbook of visual poetry Idiomatic, For The People was released in 2019. Morgan
- [Laurie Duggan](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/laurie-duggan/) - Laurie Duggan, born in Melbourne and later a resident of Sydney, Canberra and Brisbane, moved from Australia to the UK in 2006, and returned to Australia in 2018. His recent books include Selected Poems 1971–2017 and No Particular Place To Go (both published by Shearsman in the UK), and a reissue of his first two books as East and Under the Weather (Puncher
- [Matt Turner](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/matt-turner/) - Matt Turner (b.1974) is the author of Not Moving (Broken Sleep Books, 2019), and the translator of Lu Xun’s Weeds (Seaweed Salad Editions, 2019). He is also the co-translator of works by Hu Jiujiu, Yan Jun, Ou Ning and others. His essays have appeared in numerous journals, including Bookforum, Los Angeles Review of Books China Channel
- [Maitland launch on 29 May 2021](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/maitland-launch-on-29-may-2021/) - There to launch their books at Mansfield House were:Irina Frolova, Chris Mansell, Steve Armstrong, KA Rees and Rob Edmonds. Series Editor, Kit Kelen, was the M/C. Guest poets – past and future Flying Islanders included:Gail Hennessy, Kerry Shying, Magdalena Ball, Richard James Allen, Kit Kelen and Brian Purcell.
- [Nathan Curnow](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/nathan-curnow/) - Nathan Curnow is an award-winning poet, spoken word performer and past editor of literary journal, Going Down Swinging. His books include The Ghost Poetry Project, RADAR, The Right Wrong Notes and The Apocalypse Awards. He has recently taught creative writing at Federation University, and toured Europe in 2018 with loop artist, Geoffrey Williams, performing in
- [Huang Lihai 作者, 黃禮孩](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/huang-lihai-作者-黃禮孩/) - Huang Lihai was born in the 70s in Xuwen county, the southernmost tip of the Chinese mainland. His poems have been included in more than one hundred anthologies and he has published a number of poetry collections, including I Know Little about Life, Feed Rainbows to the Birds and Who Can Outrun Lightning. He has
- [Chan Lai Kuen  陳麗娟：亡星之城](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/chan-lai-kuen/) - Chan Lai Kuen (a.k.a. Dead Cat) was born in Hong Kong. She graduated from the Chinese University of Hong Kong with a degree in English, and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University (taken in Hong Kong) with a degree in Fine Art. Her book of poetry Were the Singing Cats (《有貓在歌唱》2010) was awarded Recommendation
- [Mark Tredinnick OAM](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/mark-tredinnick-oam/) - Dr Mark Tredinnick BA (Hons), LLB (Hons), MBA, PhD—is a celebrated poet, essayist, and teacher. His many works of poetry and prose include A Gathered Distance, Almost Everything I Know, Egret in a Ploughed Field, Bluewren Cantos, Fire Diary, The Blue Plateau, and The Little Red Writing Book. Since 2003, Tredinnick has published over two
- [Philip Salom](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/philip-salom/) - Philip Salom is a contemporary Australian poet and novelist whose books have attracted widespread acclaim. He has published nineteen books – fourteen collections of poetry and five novels – notable for their originality and expansiveness and for surprising differences from title to title. Philip Salom has won the Outstanding Achievement Award of the 4th Boao
- [Iman Budhi Santosa](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/iman-budhi-santosa/) - Iman Budhi Santosa, an Indonesian poet published by Flying Island in 2015, passed away in December 2020. He had dedicated his life to mentor countless creative writers and poets in Yogyakarta, Indonesia since 1969. Iman is known as one of the street poets in Yogyakarta, actively writing poems and plays even in the three-year period
- [Richard James Allen](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/richard-james-allen/) - Richard James Allen is an Australian poet, born in Kempsey, New South Wales, on the unceded lands of the Dunghutti Aboriginal People. His writing has appeared widely in journals, anthologies, and online, and he has been a popular reader at multiple reading venues, over many years. His latest volume of poetry, The short story of
- [Dan Disney](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/dan-disney/) - Originally from Australia, Dan Disney has lived in South Korea for the last decade, where he teaches in the English Literature Program at Sogang University, in Seoul. His collections include and then when the (John Leonard Press), either, Orpheus (UWAP), and Report from a border (Light-Trap Press). He is editor of Beyond Babel: Creative Writing
- [Judy Johnson](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/judy-johnson/) - Judy Johnson has published five full length collections and several chapbooks. Her books have won the Victorian Premier's Award and been shortlisted in both the NSW and WA Premier's Awards. She's been awarded the Wesley Michel Wright Prize 3 times. Her latest collection is 'Dark Convicts'(UWA publishing, 2017) a poetic exploration of her African American
- [Jean Kent](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/jean-kent/) - Jean Kent was born in Chinchilla, Queensland, in 1951. She published her first poems in a literary magazine in 1970, while she was completing an Arts Degree (majoring in psychology) at the University of Queenslandl; her first collection, Verandahs, appeared twenty years later, in 1970. Since then, another eight books of her poetry have been published.
- [Papa Osmubal](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/papa-osmubal/) - Papa Osmubal (aka Oscar Balajadia) is a poet-artist residing in Macau-SAR, China. He has an MA in English Studies from the University of Macau, where when he graduated he was awarded the highest honor (Excellence). He is also into occidental calligraphy, doing both modern and old (classical) scripts. Among his many calligraphy heroes are Joseph
- [Wang Mingyun  王明韻：六月雪](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/wang-mingyun-王明韻：六月雪/) - Wang Mingyun is a member of the Chinese Writers' Association and the China Film Association, and was awarded as a National First Class Writer. He is Vice-chairman of Anhui Writers Association and Chief Editor of the Poetry Monthly Magazine. Wang has published more than 10 books of poems, including The Fourteen Lines of the Body,
- [Yao Feng 姚風：在合唱中獨唱](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/yao-feng-姚風：在合唱中獨唱/) - Beijing-born poet Yao Feng (姚风) has lived in Macau for many years, and is currently a professor of Portuguese literature at the University of Macau. His poems have been published in many Chinese and Portuguese literary magazines, in both languages, and sometimes bilingually. He is a translator and founding editor of the magazine Chinese and
- [Steven Schroeder](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/steven-schroeder/) - I am a poet and visual artist who spent many years moonlighting as a philosophy professor. I think of my work as an intersection of chance with design — a collaboration with the media, painting with light while celebrating the way(s) pigment takes to surface, not showing or telling so much as opening a space
- [Camellia Wei 韋靜瑩：許多昨天和一個冬天](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/camellia-wei-韋靜瑩：許多昨天和一個冬天/) - Carmellia Wei Jing Ying comes from Guangxi, home of the largest minority in China, the Zhuang. She was brought up in a Zhuang family and was greatly influenced by the native song culture (traditional oral poetry). In 2015 she was completing her Masters degree at the University of Macau. Links: www.facebook.com/camellia.wei Flying Islands Pocket Poet
- [Kit Kelen](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/kit-kelen/) - Christopher (Kit) Kelen (客遠文) is a well-known Australian poet, scholar and visual artist, and Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Macau, where he taught Creative Writing and Literature for many years. Kit Kelen’s poetry has been published and broadcast widely since the seventies, and he has won a number of prestigious awards over
- [Chris Song 宋子江：自噬之花](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/chris-song-宋子江：自噬之花/) - Chris Song is a poet, translator and editor based in Hong Kong. He has published four collections of poetry and many volumes of poetry in translation. Song received an “Extraordinary Mention” at Italy’s UNESCO-recognized Nosside World Poetry Prize 2013. He won the Young Artist Award at the 2017 Hong Kong Arts Development Awards, presented by
- [Kerri Shying](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/kerri-shying/) - Kerri Shying is a poet of Chinese, Australian and Wiradjuri heritage who recently published sing out when you want me, a poetry collection that arose from receiving a Writing NSW Early Career Writer Grant in 2016. Membership & development officer Sherry Landow caught up with Kerri about the collection and other writing projects. Flying Islands
- [Robert Wood](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/robert-wood/) - Robert Wood is a poet and essayist living in Redgate, Western Australia. His writing focuses on our relationship with the natural world and draws on his experiences of country, suburb and city to create mythic landscapes informed by history and philosophy. Robert has worked for Australian Poetry, edited for Overland, Peril and Cordite, been a
- [S.K.Kelen](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/s-k-kelen/) - S. K. Kelen (Stephen Kenneth Kelen) is an Australian poet who enjoys hanging around the house philosophically and travelling. His works have been widely published in journals, ezines and newspapers, anthologies and in his books. Kelen’s oeuvre covers a diverse range of styles and subjects, and includes pastorals, satires, sonnets, odes, narratives, haiku, epics, idylls,
- [Patrick Dubost](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/patrick-dubost/) - French poet, play and puppet play writer, Is the author of more than 30 books and 2 C.Ds. He studied mathmatics and mucicology. Publishes at age 24, he started to pen poems not only on paper but through sounds in electroacoustic studios as well. (He is one of the founding members of the collective of
- [Toby Fitch](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/toby-fitch/) - Toby Fitch is an Australian poet, editor, essayist and teacher. He is the current poetry editor of Overland and a sessional academic in creative writing at the University of Sydney. His six books of poetry include Where Only the Sky had Hung Before and Object Permanence: Selected Calligrammes, while his seventh, Sydney Spleen, is forthcoming
- [Tug Dumbly](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/tug-dumbly/) - Tug Dumbly is the name, and sometimes Albatross, of Geoff Forrester, a poet and performer who has worked widely in live venues, schools, and radio. As a performer, he set up and ran some seminal spoken word nights in Sydney, including the legendary and drunken Bardflys. He has performed his poems and songs as a
- [Gillian Swain](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/gillian-swain/) - Gillian’s first poetry collection is My Skin its own Sky (Flying Islands Press 2019) following the chap-book Sang Up (Picaro Press, 2001). She has poems published in various anthologies including Poetry For The Planet: An Anthology of Imagined Futures (2021, Littoria Press), What we Carry: Poetry on Childbearing (2021, Recent Works Press), A Slow Combusting
- [Steve Armstrong](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/steve-armstrong/) - Steve Armstrong lives in Newcastle, New South Wales, and writes poetry when he's not working as a social worker/therapist. Described as a poet of "landscape, desire, memory, love, lust and loss..." (Mark Tredinnick), he won the Bruce Dawe Poetry Prize in 2015, the Local Award of the Newcastle Poetry Prize in 2014 and 2019. He's
- [Harold Legaspi](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/harold-legaspi/) - Harold Legaspi is a poet writing in Darug land. His first book, Letters in Language, was the runner-up in the inaugural Puncher & Wattmann Prize for a First Book of Poetry, was published 2021 in the Flying Islands Pocket Books of Poetry series with Cerberus Press and Association of Stories in Macau. Flying Islands Pocket
- [Irina Frolova](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/irina-frolova/) - Far and Wild is Irina Frolova's first collection of poetry. It speaks to the experience of immigration and a search for belonging. It draws on fairy-tales and explores archetypes through cultural and feminist lenses. Irina Frolova was born in Moscow in 1981, in the former Soviet Union. She moved to Australia in 2003, and now
- [KA Rees](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/ka-rees/) - KA Rees writes poetry and short fiction. Her work has been included by Australian Poetry Anthology, Australian Poetry Review, Cordite Poetry Review, Kill Your Darlings, Margaret River Press, Overland, Review of Australian Fiction, Spineless Wonders, and Yalobusha Review among others. Links: www.instagram.com/kateamber01/ Flying Islands Pocket Poet Publications Come the Bones Her debut poetry collection.
- [Myron Lysenko](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/myron-lysenko/) - Myron Lysenko began writing haiku and senryu in the late 1990's. He is the Victorian Representative for the Australian Haiku Society. He has published five books of poetry and one of haiku/senryu. His poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies around the world. Myron has run almost 50 public and private ginko since 2008.

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## Products

- [Beautiful Flames by Mark Mahemoff](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/beautiful-flames-by-mark-mahemoff/) - For over three decades Mark Mahemoff has been composing one of the most significant bodies of work in contemporary Australian poetry. “Beautiful Flames”, his sixth book-length collection, shows a poet at the top of their game. The subtle tonalities expressed in these meticulously wrought poems are striking and original. Mahemoff’s world of acute observation and insight combine melancholy and irony, the transcendent and everyday, in surprising combinations that thrill and entertain. Whether he is reflecting on family relationships, suburban streetscapes, or the rich complexity of the past, he always succeeds in finding a point of wonder that embodies the very essence of poetry. Rendered in language that is both spare and elegant, Mahemoff also demonstrates his formidable technical skill with the use of forms such as the pantoum and senryu. The whole collection reads as one extended epiphany, where realisations not only transform the everyday, but also bear witness to the pleasure and pain of memory. Professor Anthony Macris, UTS
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- [My skin its own sky by Gillian Swain](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/my-skin-its-own-sky-by-gillian-swain/) - Gillian’s first poetry collection is My Skin its own Sky (Flying Islands Press 2019) following the chap-book Sang Up (Picaro Press, 2001). She has poems published in various anthologies including Poetry For The Planet: An Anthology of Imagined Futures (2021, Littoria Press), What we Carry: Poetry on Childbearing (2021, Recent Works Press), A Slow Combusting
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- [A Kite Hangs above the Border by Laurie Duggan](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/a-kite-hangs-above-the-border-by-laurie-duggan/) - Laurie Duggan, born in Melbourne and later a resident of Sydney, Canberra and Brisbane, moved from Australia to the UK in 2006, and returned to Australia in 2018. His recent books include Selected Poems 1971–2017 and No Particular Place To Go (both published by Shearsman in the UK), and a reissue of his first two books as East and Under the Weather (Puncher & Wattman). He is also the author of Ghost Nation (UQP), a history of modernist tendencies in Australian art.
- [Alive in Dubbo by DG Lloyd](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/alive-in-dubbo-by-dg-lloyd/) - Available for sale from 1st Jan 2023! Alive in Dubbo is a collection of localised free verse. The poems are honest reflections, observational and personal depictions of life within an often-overlooked Australian community, serving both as individual snapshots and suggested chronicles of a larger narrative. Raw and sometimes confronting, illuminating and accessible, Alive in Dubbo offers a unique perspective of Australian culture and of existence itself. D.G. Lloyd is a poet with his eyes and ears fully alert, capable of producing sharp-edged, unsentimental portraits of his town, many of its citizens and indeed of himself. All this being done with remarkable sympathy for those involved. It’s an attitude which, not just Dubbo, but Australia should welcome. ALAN WEARNE
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- [Divertente and other poems by Yannis Rentzos](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/divertente-and-other-poems-by-yannis-rentzos/) - Available for sale from 1st Jan 2023! Divertente and other poems features the first part of a narrative poem that was first published in Greece, in the magazine Semioseis. This collection also includes various poems that are sometimes confessional, and sometimes run through the history of the 20th century, all written in the period 1995–2006.
- [te pāhikahikatanga/ incommensurabilty by Vaughan Rapatahana](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/te-pahikahikatanga-incommensurabilty-by-vaughan-rapatahana/) - Available for sale from 1st Jan 2023! This is a collection of Rapatahana's poetry across several years, written in te reo Māori (with English language translations). He believes this is a unique work of contemporary Māori language poetry, as well as emphasising throughout that the two languages are essentially incompatible and never fully translatable one into the other.
- [Text Messages from the Universe by Richard James Allen](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/text-messages-from-the-universe-by-richard-james-allen/) - Available for sale from 1st Jan 2023! Text Messages from the Universe was inspired by The Tibetan Book of the Dead, a Buddhist text which guides souls on their 49-day transmigration through the ‘Bardo’, or intermediate state, between dying and rebirth. It immerses readers in subjective states of consciousness they might experience when they die. It imagines what they can see and think and hear in a seamless but fragmentary flow of poetic images which turn time and space on their heads. Text Messages from the Universe, the book, designed by Dylan Jones, includes images taken from the film of the same title by The Physical TV Company, and a front cover painting created especially for the occasion by Australian painter Michelle Hiscock, who similarly created the cover for Richard James Allen’s earlier volume with Flying Islands: Fixing the Broken Nightingale.
- [Another Day by Kevin Smith](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/another-day-by-kevin-smith/) - Available for sale on 1st Jan 2023! This collection of thirty-eight poems is a book in three parts: Elsewhere; Everything is Evening; and Final Days. These are poems of an unrehearsed life, of paths taken and not taken, of lives not lived left behind, and the shadows they leave. Mostly, these poems were birthed by narrative, and deepened by the lyric, which, following Judith Beveridge in her essay ‘Lyric Poetry’, “seeks to communicate an experience to others” through “the wild and lovely agency of poems.” Smith’s hope is that these poems invite the reader in, and take them somewhere else, that they seek beyond what we see before us, toward what lies beneath. His hope, too, in Beveridge’s words, is for a “resonance and attunement” between reader and listener.
- [the terrarium by Sophie Finlay](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/the-terrarium-by-sophie-finlay/) - I place tiny shells in her palm, intricate as cathedrals I become cloud water, drawn over density — stone and gravity and core A child plays piano while cloud seeps under the door. A mother encounters the roots of trees entwined with cloudy webs of mycelium. An extinct ammonite curls its soft body into a shell. My muted wrists bleed twigs and from my body spills the heart of a fern the terrarium will take the reader from the forest to the fragile creatures of a rock pool, from the Coral Sea to the ancient geology of Antarctica. The power of lyric voice and imagery entangles with the crumbling landscapes of the Anthropocene.
- [Tide by Ivy Ireland](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/tide-by-ivy-ireland/) - There’s a lot going on in Ivy Ireland’s poems. Lines flex and fizz with ideas, descriptions flip into speculation, the abstract is suddenly personal as the poet, in the first poem from the fantastic sequence ‘Passage’, gambles on that slim chance of working out how I found myself here in the first place. Nature, gods, spirits, travel, motherhood are all swept up in poetry which journeys swiftly and widely, in wonder and uncertainty. ‘Existential’ is an overused word but it is appropriate to describe this mortal, buoyant, inquisitive poetry. -- Brook Emery
- [Urban & Landscape/Ordinary Lives by Michael Crane](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/urban-landscape-ordinary-lives-by-michael-crane/) - Michael Crane's Urban & Landscape/Ordinary Lives (his second in the Flying Islands Pocket Poets Series) is a book well described by its title. The book deals with city grit and with rural reminiscences - a poetry of real people - but mainly about relations among the typically nameless and unnoticed persons of everyday life. Michael doesn’t believe writers should be the heroes of their work and that most people are more interesting than him. So the third section does not feature the author and includes poems about other people. There are poems here ranging from a woman who leaves for Cuba, to a prisoner dealing with life and death.
- [City of the Sun by Anastasia Radievska](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/city-of-the-sun-by-anastasia-radievska/) - The City of the Sun is Flying Islands' first Ukrainian-English poetry volume, and a first book of poetry by Ukrainian-Australian, Anastasia Radievska. Riffing on Thomas Campanella's early seventeenth-century work of the same title, the book deals with the ever-sinister side of utopics. A certain amount of history reflux melds with intergenerational aspects of migrant experience. Presence is always ambiguous in The City of the Sun. Various literary/mythological presences carry us through the work, along with a series of monochrome wall plates by the author. The personal is always political in these pages and generally quirkily so. We're always ending up where we neither would have expected nor would we have wished to be.
- [art of ignorance by Sou Vai Keng](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/art-of-ignorance-by-sou-vai-keng/) - The texts in the collection are results of the author’s impressions, thoughts and imaginations during her intensive hikes in Black Forest, Germany and Baselland, Switzerland between 2014 and 2018. Most of the poems were originally written in English and later translated or rewritten in Chinese by the author herself. The drawings in the book are from the series “Lost in Black Forest”, created especially for this publication by the author in 2022, medium being oil crayon and pencil on paper. As a passionate hiker, Sou continues to take long walks and draw inspiration from forests and mountains for her writing and painting.
- [nibs & nubs by Josh Stenberg](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/nibs-nubs-by-josh-stenberg/) - nibs & nubs is a collection of stray words, yoked and reassembled into attractive shapes, tested for cadence and vowel roundness, and finally ornamented with late imperial birds. The poems are geographically distractable, addled with the mystique of etymology, and suspended between the lures of irony and the muted terrors of introspection. Here is a first collection that depict the years of lust and wanderlust as recollected and reorganised in slowly sobering afterlife. "nibs & nubs is a book which is not afraid to record genuine experience with a very sharp nib, generously going deep to the nub of one person’s life. It is a book to read slowly, with awe for its poetic audacity and skill, and gratitude for its sharing of a gamut of emotion from grief to grace." --Jean Kent
- [Tarp Green Light by Carl Walsh](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/tarp-green-light-by-carl-walsh/) - Carl Walsh’s ‘Tarp Green Light’ is a first collection of poems that traverses a topography of history, memory, family and loss. Across four chapters, the poems navigate through lifetimes and landscapes. Rain falls and muddies the Yarra or swells rivers in Papua New Guinea. Seas bear Viking longships or rise as ice caps melt. Magpies chorus from childhood or a statue of Pan in Italy awakes. Children sleep in a bed their grandfather made and a Japanese castle leaps at sky – in poems that move between travelogue, autobiography and imagination. Front cover photo by Tug Dumbly.
- [Historic Present by Andrew Burke](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/historic-present-by-andrew-burke/) - This is the final volume of prolific Perth poet, Andrew Burke, and his second in the Flying Islands' Pocket Poets Series. Historic Present presents a wide range of topics and vivid slices of the poet's life – places and seasons and times of life – around Australia and around the world. Historic Present foregrounds corporeal concerns and intimations of mortality such as the title of the book may suggest. A fitting postscript to Burke's 2020 New and Selected poems, Historic Present salutes some various personages in Australian poetry. Never ornate, rather to the point, it is a collection of impressively knotted loose ends.
- [Thin Reed Throat](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/thin-reed-throat/) - Thin Reed Throat is the debut poetry collection from award-winning writer and spoken word artist Damien Becker. With unflinching honesty, humour and lyrical grace, Becker explores life with cystic fibrosis and lung transplantation. ‘Thin Reed Throat is a serious book on an important topic, ambitious in its scope, and beautifully written, utilising poetry to its full capacity… to tell a powerful and uplifting story that moves easily and naturally between laugh-out-loud funny and tear-evoking’ -- Flying Islands Prize Judges Panel.
- [Still Alive in Dubbo](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/still-alive-in-dubbo/) - Combining social-realism and confessionalism with everyday language and geographical references, capturing imagery and portraits – the mundane, the unusual and the sometimes confronting – Still Alive in Dubbo is simultaneously a standalone presentation of verse and a companion piece to its predecessor Alive in Dubbo. A composition of visions and voices which are both uniquely Australian and universally human. “Our 'big cities' need their poets of course, as does suburbia and as always since the 19th Century, the Bush. But what about those other Australian cities, those indeed like Dubbo? Well, that's where David Grant Lloyd certainly comes in. As with his previous book, Still Alive in Dubbo is a solid account of a place he certainly identifies with. Has it faults? What place hasn't. And given his poetry who cares. Why? Because Dubbo fascinates him.” --Alan Wearne
- [Screaming and Euphoria](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/screaming-and-euphoria/) - Poems that span eighty years, memories recalled with humour and humility, emotions from the past that remain fresh and vivid, painful and joyous, offerings that say, we are all human: we share each other's suffering, we remember the sacrifices, we honour the love. A merry-go-round, a roller coaster of tears and laughter, screaming and euphoria.
- [Blimmin' Wimmin](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/blimmin-wimmin/) - The women-centred poems in Blimmin’ Wimmin are a femage to artists, writers, mothers, animals and plants, real and imagined, that inspire by their acts, what they create and their presence on the planet. In this celebration of individuality, community, activism, environment survival, audacity and the ideology of feminism, the poet also reflects on her journey to understanding ways to live a meaningful life. Language is a tool that poets use in any way we want.
- [New Ordinance for the Dead](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/new-ordinance-for-the-dead/) - In New Ordinance for the Dead, Ronald Araña Atilano’s first collection of poems, abandoned spaces and structures become crevices of meaning, receptacles of myth—a derelict fountain in a city square, an island after a spate of typhoons, a garbage dumpsite. These eighty bilingual poems are itinerant, seeking symbol and metaphor in both centre and periphery, where illumination emerges from the rubble like ‘beheaded stems’, and a muddy puddle reflects the sky like a ‘master looking out a window of fog.’
- [Food of Love – Concert Pieces](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/food-of-love-concert-pieces/) - #Compiled over a ten year period, Kit Kelen's Food of Love – Concert Pieces offers the reader one hundred and one short poems, each devoted to a particular piece of (mainly) classical music. On the playlist, music for every taste! From Holst to Stravinsky, from Borodin to Hildegard of Bingen, to contemporary Australian composers such as Brenda Gifford, Sally Greenaway and Joseph Tawadros. With themes from nature, war, mythology and romance, with echoes of the concert hall, of cinema, of animation, the range of matter and method of the poems is as broad as the music they honour.
- [Gravity Doesn't Always Work by Robert Edmonds](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/gravity-doesnt-always-work-by-robert-edmonds/) - I commend this book deeply, it’s wonderful. Adam Aitken
- [100 Poets](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/100-poets/) - 100 Poets celebrates more than one hundred books in the Pocket Poets' series! It features one poem each from poets both obscure and well-known - established and up-and-coming - Australian and international - who are all part of the Flying Islands' community. Each poet has been given one pocket-page to contribute work - and it makes for a brilliant, surprising, illuminating read! Get it for someone you love - or for yourself. Featuring a richly evocative cover by contributing poet Anna Couani, this is a book to treasure.
- [Poems from the 29th Floor by Michael Crane](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/poems-from-the-29th-floor-by-michael-crane/) - Michael Crane has had many poems and stories published in Australian journals including Overland, Meanjin, Southerly, The Best Australian Poems 2011, 2014 & 2015. He was managing editor of the literary journal; The Paradise Anthology and organised Poetry Idol for the Melbourne Writers Festival 2007 to 2012 and during that period he toured with the late great poet Les Murray four times. He is currently production assistant for Into The Limelight; a film project with people dealing with a mental illness.
- [Foxline by Chris Mansell](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/foxline-by-chris-mansell/) - Foxline reconnoitres the relationship between the land and the creatures on it: Man (a farmer), and Fox. The relationship between the creatures themselves reveals their alien natures. Both claim the land for themselves but neither is autochthonous. They are opposed to each other but have an understanding and an alliance nevertheless because they both kill and have nowhere else.
- [a pocket Kit by Christopher (Kit) Kelen](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/a-pocket-kit-by-christopher-kit-kelen/) - a pocket Kit presents the discerning reader with some few of the essential poetical works of Christopher (Kit) Kelen. It covers works from a dozen previous collections, and poems dating back to the seventies. Having this book is no excuse to not buy his others. Far from it; this is a book for intensive study and memorisation, as outlined in the poem 'keep this book': keep this book better than sutras no need to chant or strike a gong just hang it on a string around your neck it’ll make your day walk with it sleep with it read it out loud quote it at will make sure you’ve memorised every last line then when it falls apart you’re the glue and the book will keep you together
- [A Chance of Seasons by Rob Schackne](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/a-chance-of-seasons-by-rob-schackne/) - Born in New York, Rob Schackne lived in many countries until Australia finally took him in. He was a Foreign Expert EFL teacher in China for many years. He now lives in Castlemaine, Vic. where he enjoys the blue skies, fresh air and the birds. There were some extreme sports once; now he plays (mostly)
- [local by Anna Couani](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/local-by-anna-couani/) - local concerns itself with the local environment of the Glebe, an inner city suburb of Sydney and with other areas of the inner city. Some of the poems were written as part of 366 Poetry Project. It traces the author's family history and connections to the inner city and also addresses issues of colonisation and the dispossession of indigenous people in Sydney. The book contains 13 artworks by the author.
- [What the river told me by Jane Skelton](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/what-the-river-told-me-by-jane-skelton/) - Where is home? Where is my place? Would I feel at home in the place of my ancestors, or is my place this invaded, colonised country, where I’ve mostly lived? In these poems, I journey to Scotland, to the moors of Northumberland, seeking a genetic thread. I think I’ve found my people, ‘but it was only the whiskey’. Home again, through rivers, the lake and the sea. The dry bush, Queensland, are washed in images of water. I dig at the roots of colonisation, the blackbirder William Boyd, who left his mark on a coast that I love, a wild, quiet place with a violent history. A centre, a heart-place is identified, only to be devastated by fire and flood, the onslaught of climate change. Virginia Shepherd’s illustrations, her strange primordial fish, are a pause, a counterpoint, a reflection on nature and transience.
- [The Language of Light by Jean Kent](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/the-language-of-light-by-jean-kent/) - The Language of Light is a selection of poems from Jean Kent’s collections, with translations into Chinese by Iris Fan Xing. The poetry ranges from memories of childhood in country towns and on a farming property in Queensland to adult experiences visiting family in Lithuania and living in Paris. Scenes from everyday life, working as a psychologist, and at home in a bushy suburb at Lake Macquarie, NSW, also feature. Included are poems which won the Josephine Ulrick National Poetry Prize and the Dorothy Porter Prize.
- [Written On Water by Gail Hennessy](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/written-on-water-by-gail-hennessy/) - Gail Hennessy has had poems published in: Poetry for the Planet, An Anthology of Imagined Futures; Not Very Quiet Anthology 2017-2021; Outrageous — Guide to Sydney Crime); the Avondale Anthology, This Gift, This Poem, 2021; Common or Garden Poets, the community blog; and Tanka in Eucalypt: a tanka journal.
- [Knitting Mangrove Roots by Kerri Shying](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/1010/) - '...Knitting Mangrove Roots is a fitting title for the work. The mangrove with its tangled roots that grow above ground forms a dense thicket. Its root system maintains water quality and clarity, filtering pollutants and trapping sediments originating from the land. The three sections of the work – The roots, The ground and The tide – recall the life cycle of the mangrove tree and its connective and protective importance to the environment. It is a vital part of our ecological system in the same way the voice of the poet is a positive strength in the world: as nurturer and protector.' – Gail Hennessy
- [a pocket kit 2 by Kit Kelen](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/a-pocket-kit-2-by-kit-kelen/) - Christopher (Kit) Kelen is a well known Australian poet, scholar and visual artist, and Professor of English at the University of Macau, where he has taught Creative Writing and Literature for the last fiftteen years. Volumes of his poetry have been published in Chinese, Portuguese, French, Italian, Swedish, Indonesian and Filipino languages. The most recent of Kit Kelen's twenty English language poetry books is Scavengers Season, published by Puncher and Wattman in 2014. Kelen has published two scholarly volumes about poetry: Poetry, Consciousness, Community (Rodopi 2009) and City of Poets - Exploring Macao Poetry Today (ASM, 2009). Kelen's theoretical study of national songs Anthem Quality was published in 2014 by Intellect Press in the UK and the University of Chicago Press. Kit Kelen is the Editor of the cross-arts international on-line journal the wonderbook and is Literary Editor for Postcolonial Text.
- [A YEAR OF NON-STOP POETRY MAKING Professor Kit Kelen’s One Year Flying Islands Poetry Manuscript Workshop](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/a-year-of-non-stop-poetry-making-professor-kit-kelens-one-year-flying-islands-poetry-manuscript-workshop/)
- [Sleep to dream & Wake to Play  – Professor Kit Kelen’s One Year Flying Islands Poetry Manuscript Workshop](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/sleep-to-dream-wake-to-play-professor-kit-kelens-one-year-flying-islands-poetry-manuscript-workshop/)
- [Filmworks](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/filmworks/) - Join Brian Purcell on a personal poetic excursion through the history of the great films - from Caligari to Oppenheimer, Bergman to Tarkovsky, 2001 A Space Odyssey to Godzilla Minus Zero! Prepare to be challenged, shocked and amused. 'With so many roles and perspectives, whilst maintaining a singular consistency with his voice, Purcell is encompassing the entirety of his world, our world and the world of cinema into one amalgamative vision.' D G Lloyd, prizewinning author of 'Alive in Dubbo'
- [Separation Blues: Poems 1994–2024](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/separation-blues-poems-1994-2024/) - Separation Blues: Poems 1994–2024 contains poems from nine of Nathanael O’Reilly’s published collections. The poems span three decades of composition, from poems written in Ballarat in 1994 to recent work composed in Texas and Ireland. The poems revisit an Australian childhood and adolescence in the 1970s and 80s, traverse a young adulthood spent in Australia, Europe and America, and arrive in the present with the middle-aged poet living in Texas and travelling frequently to Ireland and Australia (his homelands).
- [Stranded](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/stranded/) - This selection of poems ranges from realism to the surreal, exploring the strange world of everyday life, the complexities of existence and reconnecting with our ancestral roots.
- [The Heart's Lush Gardens](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/the-hearts-lush-gardens/) - Anatomically, the heart is just an organ, albeit a marvellous and efficient one, with a vital function to perform. Yet we invest the word ‘heart’ and our concept of it with multiple other meanings some of which are abstract and not well defined. We wear it on our sleeves, it is the centre of things, the heart of the matter. It is, among other things, ‘axiom: gravity well: lightning rod: leitmotif.’ In The Heart’s Lush Gardens David Adès undertakes a poetic exploration of the heart, wandering through its gardens, stopping to pause here and there, trying to view it in its multiplicity.
- [Tadpoems](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/tadpoems/) - "TADPOEMS" is 400 micro-poems interspersed with 50 of the author's pics. The poems are mostly fun, apart from the black bits, with the odd dip into Nature, Politics, Religion and Philosophy. Tug Dumbly says: "many of these little squibs were born from walks, my mind freewheeling and conversing with whatever it passed in the moment. Or maybe I'd just be playing with words, or grinding over some ancient gripe, or some fresh piece of weirdness in the ether, some cultural or political absurdity, some buzzword, trend, dream, bit of levity, joy ... whatever. It all gets minced in the walking machine and sometimes turned into these party franks. Or ‘Tadpoems’. There are one-liners, aphorisms and mock ads, and sweet little snippets of the natural world. There are Haiku-ish things, though they’re more often ‘Barb-Haiku’ than Basho. And yes, there are puns. A few are shameless life-support systems for Dad jokes. But I’m a dad, so that’s ok. This is a fun and accessible book for High-brow, Mid-Brow and Low-brow, even for those who'd rather gargle slugs than read a poem.
- [flower ash](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/flower-ash/) - In these powerful, exquisite poems, Huang Fan, a major Chinese poet, takes stock of his life from the vantage point of middle age, finding deep connections with nature, but also rueful solitude, memories of lostness, and a lingering sense of missed opportunities. These translations beautifully capture a threnody of wonder and sadness which is the poet's singular achievement. --Phillip Lopate
- [Bitumen Psalms](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/bitumen-psalms/) - In Bitumen Psalms you follow the Hume Highway from the inland Yass region where Lizz Murphy lives, all the way to Wollongong on the South Coast where she used to live. Lizz often writes about place and belonging. In the long title sequence of micro and haiku-ish poems, she is all too aware of her unbelonging — always just passing through. In these pinch-size poems she attempts to engage more closely. grasses breezy land alive with skitter and crawl wedge-tails circling the rising air There are also glimpses of her own patch in the village of Binalong, through Tai Chi, her other passion. Raising arms (six times) Mt Bobbara becomes golden blue shadowstreak each rock inscribed on the horizon — (from Opening the Heart) In other shorter sequences is a love of objects, the frustration of computers and time spent in hospitals: aged mothers affection on their faces middle-aged sons caring on their hands
- [South of Words by Iris Fan Xing](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/south-of-words-by-iris-fan-xing/) - Christopher (Kit) Kelen has described Iris Fan Xing’s South of Words as ‘not translation’. The intersection between English and Chinese Mandarin lies at its heart, reflecting Fan’s converging identities across settings and cultures. Her publisher, Kelen identifies that readers’ engagement with bilingual poetry can be limited by our evaluation of translated works predominantly by their faithfulness to the assumed ‘original’ product, often regarding translation itself as necessarily an act of ‘watering down’. Fan has previously subverted this notion in her debut collection, Lost in the Afternoon (2009), which was intended instead as a conversation between parallel texts, capable of greater richness and imaginative value in tandem than as a standalone works. From a review by Alex Creece in Cordite Poetry Review, 26 April 2019
- [Exhibit by Judy Johnson](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/exhibit-by-judy-johnson/) - In these poems the external world is used as a mirror for the internal, emotional landscape. By weaving together these inner and outer threads, thereby making new connections, Johnson redefines the familiar so that it becomes once again strange and convincing. Short, sharp pieces drawn from abiding concerns with family, death and love contrast with longer poems which are historical narratives addressing issues of lasting ethical significance. Of previous books: ‘This is a poetry both worldly and refined.’ Judith Beveridge ‘Johnson explores the complex interplay between the external world and the inexpressible, often intolerable inner world we carry with us.’ Peter Boyle. 'Johnson’s poetic voice has an exacting edge to it, demanding our attention, inciting unease. The cool polish of the surface tension, the glint of something barbarous rising from the depths.' Jennifer Compton
- [riversalt by Lou Smith](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/riversalt-by-lou-smith/) - Weaving stories of migration, colonisation and diaspora, Lou Smith’s collection riversalt follows her family’s patterns of migrations from North Wales, Jamaica and England to her hometown of Newcastle, Australia. Inspired by all manner of things including literature, science, personal stories, folklore, and artworks, the poems in riversalt are both personal and historical, contemplating notions of memory, ‘home’, and belonging, in a meditation on the meaning of ‘place'.
- [Seem by Alan Jefferies](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/seem-by-alan-jefferies/) - The poems continue to evince a kind of spiritual, slightly mystical openness or suggestibility in a language that is demotic, cool-ly neutral: epiphany with no signs of struggle or effortfulness, no rhetorical war-dance. (Ken Bolton) “ his lyrics manage to dispel all consciousness of time through the loveliness of their perceptions” Gary Catalano, Meanjin “His virtue is elegantly spare, suggestive diction” Judith Rodriguez (Hobo) “Jefferies demonstrates his ability to produce finely honed poems that nevertheless invite the reader to participate in extending meaning beyond the written text” Cornelius Vleeskens (Ulitarra) “this is poetry that demands to be read aloud.” Danny Huppatz (Southerly) “ … above all, an effortless rhythm and economy, and a studied clarity, making it a lucid collection“ Adam Aitken (Heat)
- [in the same breath by Alan Jefferies](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/in-the-same-breath-by-alan-jefferies/) - “Jefferies continue to evince a kind of spiritual, slightly mystical openness or suggestibility in a language that is demotic, cool-ly neutral: epiphany with no signs of struggle or effortfulness, no rhetorical war-dance.” Ken Bolton ("Coalcliff Days") “ his lyrics manage to dispel all consciousness of time through the loveliness of their perceptions” Gary Catalano, Meanjin “His virtue is elegantly spare, suggestive diction…” Judith Rodriguez (Hobo) "…this is poetry that demands to be read aloud.” Danny Huppatz (Southerly) “Blood Angels has, above all, an effortless rhythm and economy, and a studied clarity, making it a lucid collection“ Adam Aitken (Heat)
- [The Party of Life by Beth Spencer](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/the-party-of-life-by-beth-spencer/) - In ‘The Party of Life’ Spencer writes about love, family, gender, sexuality, class and belonging with raw honesty and insight. Like any good party, there is much to enjoy and ponder in this witty and evocative collection. “These are beautiful poems. I got goosebumps while translating some of them. They are all hauntingly beautiful. I remember not being able to move when I came to the last line of ‘the Bra Monologues’. I don’t know why; I was strangely touched.” — Ruby Chen (translator) “The Party of Life is a big book disguised as a little book. It is the Tardis of books. …Highly portable, richly evocative, impeccably observed and moving.” — Bernard Cohen “As Beckett didn’t say ‘Ever tried. Ever felt. No matter. Try Again. Feel again. Feel better.’ So when, at the start of ‘The Museum of Fire’ she quotes Peter Tyndall ‘A person looks at work of art / Someone looks at something’ it is an ‘aha’ moment that lasts the whole book through because, like Tyndall, Beth’s statement is always true, always the same, and yet infinitely variable.’ – Peter Kenneally
- [Atonement by Vaughan Rapatahana](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/atonement-by-vaughan-rapatahana/) - Vaughan Rapatahana’s newest book project only demonstrates that cultures and traditions find a common ground in the written word, with some veritable help from the visual and music arts, and to be specific in Rapatahana’s style—diverse lexicons. Atonement, by virtue of its unusual enjambments and visual play, treats familiar material in a stimulating manner. It presents a local milieu through the eyes of an outsider so that local materials are exotic and fresh.
- [Decline and Fall by Rae Desmond Jones](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/992/) - Decline and Fall is a small scale book containing a number of ambitious and important recent poems side by side with a series of Chinese translations by Song Zijiang and Hilda Tam Hio Man. The poet worked for a weekend with the two translators face to face, however the collaboration was for a considerable period during which Song and Hilda worked with great care to catch the individual quality of Jones' work. That they have succeeded is remarkable because of the gulf between the conventions of vernacular Australian English and Chinese.
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- [Come the Bones by KA Rees](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/come-the-bones-by-ka-rees/) - K A Rees was short-listed for the 2016 Judith Wright Poetry Prize. She was the recipient of the 2017 Barry Hannah Prize in Fiction, and runner-up in the 2018 Peter Cowan Short Story Award. She was a 2019 Varuna Fellowship holder for her manuscript of short stories and was the national winner of the 2019 joanne burns Microlit Award. Come the Bones is her debut poetry collection.
- [Pretend I Don’t Exist by Morgan Bell](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/pretend-i-dont-exist-by-morgan-bell/) - Morgan Bell is a Port Stephens author of short fiction. Her books include Sniggerless Boundulations, Laissez Faire, and Intersection Control: Collected Works. She is a qualified technical writer, creative writing teacher, and editor of Sproutlings: A Compendium of Little Fictions. Her first chapbook of visual poetry Idiomatic, For The People was released in 2019. www.compulsivereader.com/2022/02/17/a-review-of-pretend-i-dont-exist-by-morgan-bell
- [Wave 9: Collages by Matt Turner](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/wave-9-collages-by-matt-turner/) - Matt Turner (b.1974) is the author of Not Moving (Broken Sleep Books, 2019), and the translator of Lu Xun’s Weeds (Seaweed Salad Editions, 2019). He is also the co-translator of works by Hu Jiujiu, Yan Jun, Ou Ning and others. His essays have appeared in numerous journals, including Bookforum, Los Angeles Review of Books China
- [What's left by Steve Armstrong](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/whats-left-by-steve-armstrong/) - What’s Left picks up where Steve’s 2018 collection Broken Ground left off, and further explores what it means to walk with the natural world. Many poems draw inspiration from classical Chinese poetry where a love of nature leads to a deeper meditation on what it means to be human. “Mengjiao – bird in an empty city”, and “pluck a lotus for pleasure – women poets of the Song Dynasty” are ASM titles that have been particularly influential.
- [yonder blue wild by S. K. Kelen](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/yonder-blue-wild-by-s-k-kelen/) - 'Award-winning author S K Kelen beautifully explores the theme of travel in his collection Yonder Blue Wild. For some, travel is a benefit awarded to them by virtue of their class; for some it is a tool to attain an idealised version of the life they want to lead. For others, travel is something they have no choice in. The connecting thread is indeed a kind of escapism, and an attempt to express, through movement from place to place, one’s own humanity. In that expression hides stories untold.' From Magan Magan's review of S K Kelen’s Yonder Blue Wild, Cordite December 2019
- [Wake to Play by Kit Kelen](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/wake-to-play-by-kit-kelen/) - Christopher (Kit) Kelen is a poet, painter and scholar, resident in the Myall Lakes of NSW. Published widely since the seventies, Kelen has a dozen full length collections in English, as well as translated books of poetry in Chinese, Portuguese, French, Italian, Spanish, Indonesian, Swedish, Norwegian and Filipino. Kelen’s latest volume of poetry is Poor
- [The Bread Horse by Ross Donlon](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/the-bread-horse-by-ross-donlon/) - "The Bread Horse is a selection of poems from The Blue Dressing Gown and Lucidity, featuring both dark and comic poems inspired by his travels in Romania and Norway"
- [The Leaving by Brian Purcell](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/the-leaving-by-brian-purcell/) - The Leaving features poems mostly written in the past decade, covering the author’s move from the city to the country, new challenges, relationships, landscapes and loves. Poems written with humour and in sorrow, with joy and passion, with incredulity and awe. Sometimes clear-eyed and disturbingly real, sometimes utterly fantastic, containing portraits of painters and politicians, of children paddling canoes, of a doomed lyricist writing songs on the road, of a lover pleading with his girlfriend to stay, and finally of life in the shadow of Covid. Just one person’s life in the 21st century. 'It is a great pleasure to read poetry that is so open, emotional and unafraid of vulnerability. There are so many moving poems, and so much delightful phrase making that the book is a strong and rewarding read. These poems are also rich in observation, they demonstrate how feeling can be seamlessly recast into rhythm and musicality. Purcell captures the private instances of the sensual world with great aplomb. These poems have a sharpness of mind, a penetrating focus of image and diction, and a resonance that lingers.' Judith Beveridge, recipient of the Prime Minister's Literary Awards for Poetry for Sun Music, 2019 Towards the Open Sea: Martin Langford launches ‘The Leaving’ by Brian Purcell – Rochford Street Review
- [The Line is Busy by Andrew Burke](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/the-line-is-busy-by-andrew-burke/) - 'The Line Is Busy' is a selection of poems chosen between Andrew and Iris Fan who translated the poems. Some minor hurdles were negotiated between them, under the watchful eye of Kit Kelen. The cover is Blue Abstract by Marjorie Bussey, Australian artist, and the back cover portrait of the poet was by Chiara Bussey, daughter of Marge. The contents are in two languages to further the readership of this Aussie poet - and for the adventure of seeing the poems focused one word at a time. A beautiful book to hold in your hand!
- [up through branches by Kit Kelen](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/up-through-branches-by-kit-kelen/)
- [Short Bursts of Eternity by Daniel Ionita](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/short-bursts-of-eternity-by-daniel-ionita/) - Instructions for reading this volume: I will be home, or maybe not when you arrive. The soup is in the empty fridge; just warm it up. A ghost of lettuce and a spectre of some buttercup, there should be something, maybe nothing, to contrive. Not much to do about that cough, should it persist, and settle in the guest room, should it still exist. Watch some TV, there's nothing on unless there is, and read this book with missing pages - hers and his.
- [Small Wonders by Anna Couani](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/small-wonders-by-anna-couani/) - Small Wonders is Anna Couani's fifth book and is a bilingual English-Chinese collection of poems translated into the Chinese by Sou Vaikeng who also provided ink drawings. Reviewer Virginia Shepherd: "...touching simultaneously the near and the far, Kochi in India, the arms stretched towards Turkey... The poems together form a micro-novel in a pocket format, an organismic structure that can be understood at the level of an individual poem...”
- [Preludes After Rain by Jonas Zdanys](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/preludes-after-rain-by-jonas-zdanys/) - Jonas Zdanys was born in New Britain, Connecticut, a few months after his parents arrived in the United States from a United Nations camp for Lithuanian refugees. He received his B.A. in English from Yale University and his M.A. and Ph.D. in English from the State University of New York. A bilingual poet and translator,
- [Talk Music by David McAleavey](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/talk-music-by-david-mcaleavey/) - Greetings. My Flying Islands pocket book is titled TALK MUSIC, and it appeared in early 2018 (copyright date Dec. 2017). I spent the Fall 2016 semester in a faculty exchange at the University of Macau, part of a short-lived program between UM and my home university, George Washington University in Washington, DC.
- [Recollections by Matthew Cheng](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/recollections-by-matthew-cheng/) - CHENG Ching-hang Matthew 鄭政恆 (poet, editor; Hong Kong) is the author of the poetry collection Recollections, co-author of Wait and See: The Collection of Six Hong Kong Young Writers, and the editor of An Anthology of Hong Kong Poetry of the 1950s, Hong Kong Short Stories 2004-2005, and Hong Kong Cinema Retrospective 2011, among others. The former
- [Sea Skins by Sophia Wilson](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/sea-skins-by-sophia-wilson/) - Available for sale from 1st Jan 2023! Sophia Wilson’s Sea Skins explores the porous interfaces between personal, communal and environmental integrity. Slipping, sliding, going under and going overboard coexist with a determination to negotiate safe passage. Through the lenses of heritage, migration and ecological emergency, the collection shapeshifts and evolves to examine what is both cherished and damaged. ‘Sea skins’ are life’s fleeting flotsam and jetsam, teeth, tongue and bone amid dehumanising systems and alienating machines. They are word skins and survival skins, the diverse skins of sustainability and diplomacy, and ultimately, the tender under-skins at the heart of things. Wilson sifts through our scars and crimes with intricate control and a fine-gauge eye, urgency and activism always pressing on her tongue…Sea Skins palpates the threshold of crisis, from our ‘bleeding inner coastlines’ to our ‘mass extinctions,’ exposing ‘the real, bleak, airless deal[s] going down’ in lines that glimmer, strike and linger. — Tracey Slaughter
- [Not What You Think by Clark Gormley](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/not-what-you-think-by-clark-gormley/) - Not What You Think is a collection of poems that uses wit and wordplay to explore the hidden stories of everyday life. Many of the poems delve into the domestic suburban surrounds of Clark's home-town. Others offer a satirical take on nature and modern technology. From watching birds to venetian blinds and nonsense rhymes, Gormley’s poetry adds lustre to things we know so well that we often stop thinking about them. But don’t believe the blurb. Here’s a link to a review: http://www.compulsivereader.com/2020/04/16/a-review-of-not-what-you-think-by-clark-gormley/
- [Mirror Me by Chris Song](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/mirror-me-by-chris-song/) - Chris Song 宋子江 is a poet and translator based in Hong Kong. He has published three collections of poetry and many volumes of poetry translation. He was poet-in-residence at Bundanon in New South Wales, Australia in 2010 to 2011, and won the "Extraordinary Mention" of the 2013 Nosside International Poetry Prize. Song is involved in
- [The Beast Should Comply by Philip Hammial](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/the-beast-should-comply-by-philip-hammial/) - The Beast Should Comply is essentially a mini selected, with poems from nine of Hammial’s twenty-six collections. The title and title poem are from an Arthur Boyd drawing that Kit Kelen and Hammial discovered in the Boyd archives when they were at Bundanoon editing The Beast. At the time they had no idea what to call the book, and there it was leaping up as big as life. “…provocative and punchy. It engages with the world and is full of humour, irony, sarcasm, extreme images, with a universality of interests and a cosmopolitan flair that serves as a good antidote for mere good intentions in writing.” – Peter Boyle
- [Sunday Morning, Here by Jill McKeowen - (Ebook only)](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/3189/) - THE PRINT VERSION IS NOW SOLD OUT! Sunday Morning, Here is Jill McKeowen’s first collection of poetry, articulating an acceptance of impermanence and loss, and consequent arrival at a sense of identity and place. Moving from teenage years beside the “lapis-lazuli ocean” of the Central Coast of NSW to a last home in a post-industrial suburb of Newcastle, the poems record the details of very Australian lives, troublingly settled on “deeply storied ground” but blessed by childhood memories of a family with love behind its purpose (always). Beside an awareness of war and damage elsewhere, they celebrate the transfiguring possibilities of the everyday: the layers of the past in an old Swan teapot; the bits and pieces left in a dead father’s shed; the “pilgrimage of woodsmoke to the stars”. ENDORSEMENTS: Sunday Morning, Here is a deeply moving, beautifully crafted and perfected collection of poems. I first read it in one sitting, and was swept away by its clarity and directness, its vivid descriptions and generous celebrations of people and places. This is meticulous, careful writing, which is also effortlessly welcoming. Keenly intelligent, but also tender and intimate, Jill McKeowen’s posthumously published book is a gift from a poet with both a deep love and acceptance for life with all its chaos and beauty, and a desire to record that, clear-eyed, in words that would keep it real and unforgotten. Jean Kent This is one of the best Pocket books I've read! Accomplished, poignant, and brilliant at establishing a sense of place. This book will give everyone who reads it a sense of solace and joy. Brian Purcell
- [High Wire Step by Magdalena Ball](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/high-wire-step-by-magdalena-ball/) - High Wire Step is a collection of poems that engages deeply with political issues, from the impact of violence, oppression, and human arrogance to the power of empathy, collective consciousness, and humility. The varied voices in these poems are often playful and post-modern while keeping a fiercely scientific perspective, encompassing collective grief and responsibility, and drawing together the macro perspective of the universe with the micro perspective of heartbreak. These are poems about the impact of greed, bigotry, social change, genetic inheritance, homelessness, disability, and loss, but they are also poems with a slightly mystical slant, exploring transcendence and alternative forms of power and transformation From the technological singularity to crypto-currency, edible crickets to Trump Tower, High Wire Step moves organically between time and space, between an urban and a wild landscape and between despair and hopefulness.
- [Fixing the Broken Nightingale by Richard James Allen](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/fixing-the-broken-nightingale-by-richard-james-allen/) - Fixing the Broken Nightingale contains poems of paradox, cynicism, tenderness, outrage and resignation, fleeting lust and enduring love, observation, invention and glimpses of enlightenment written by this widely published and charismatic author, whose earlier books include the critically lauded The Kamikaze Mind (Brandl &Schlesinger) and the NSW Premier's Literary Award-nominated Thursday's Fictions (Five Island Press), and whose previous work also includes multi-award-winning creativity for the screen, the stage and new media platforms. “The phrases that might describe these poems all have a ring of paradox: stylish frailty, eloquent reticence, dance moves arrested, stasis in flux. The question, says Richard James Allen, is how to link the miracle in each moment to the next. In trying to find an answer, he tiptoes and skips and scampers to the brink, peeping to see what words are coming next. The contingency of his language meets love and sex, desolation and death, and the redemptive power of art, as time marks its passing through these wistful performances.” Michael Hulse “Allen’s is a peripatetic eye... enthusiastic, despairing, loving, frantic. Here is a poet who dares to be vulnerable and awed.” Les Wicks “The diary of one poet's search for authenticity---a series of quests---this collection needs to be read as a whole. An exceptionally engaging book.” Vivian Smith “I enjoyed the humour. A very readable collection.” Philip Hammial “In Fixing the Broken Nightingale Richard Allen treats the reader to a wealth of clear, sparse, beautifully poised lyrics that play off the idea of poetry as a chronicle of life. Yet with his strong instinct for humour, strangeness, frailty, sadness and grit, Allen does much more than this. These poems seem to come straight out of reality and deliver it whole. The refreshing, fully alive poems in this collection show how simplicity and wisdom are still one very powerful combination.” Peter Boyle “A treasure chest of poetry.” Beatriz Copello
- [Ill Lit Pop by Toby Fitch](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/1602/) - ILL LIT POP pirates lines from poetry, TV and pop music and performs them on some island in the digital swamplands. From ‘bad lip readings’ of canonical poems to melodramatic collages of Twin Peaks scripts and skewed mashups of pop lyrics, these anti-pop poems co-opt subjectivity and copyright, twisting the confected vagaries of pop culture into critical and playful new confections
- [Fish Bones by Cui Yuwei](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/fish-bones-by-cui-yuwei/) - Cui Yuwei (better known under the pen name Wei Huan) is an award-winning poet and translator based in China. Her first bilingual poetry collection, Fish Bones, was published in 2017 by ASM/Flying Islands in Macao. She currently works as an international coordinator in Beijing Normal University at Zhuhai.
- [Let's Take the Blue Sky by Storm by Odveig Klyve](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/lets-take-the-blue-sky-by-storm-by-odveig-klyve/) - Let's take the blue sky by storm tells the story of a political process with great contradictions, namely the development of the so-called monster masts in Hardanger. The poems raise questions that concern all of us about the management of nature. Odveig Klyve brings connections and conflicts between people, nature and society to life in a very distinctive way in this strong and important collection of poems.
- [Instant History by Richard Tipping](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/instant-history-by-richard-tipping/) - Poet and artist Richard Tipping has three degrees including a doctorate from the University of Technology Sydney (2007). He is a widely-published poet and makes artworks which incorporate his own poetic texts – such as in engraved stone sculpture, in original and altered sign designs, and with visual poetry graphics on paper. He worked as an academic in media arts for many years at the University of Newcastle, NSW. Tipping is well known for original and altered sign designs since 1979, which have been exhibited internationally; and for public works incorporating his own poetic texts with three dimensional forms such as neon and LED lightworks, plate steel and aluminium, engraved granite, etc, in large-scale sculpture. He has held solo exhibitions in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, and internationally in cities including London, Munich, Washington and New York. He has completed public and private sculptural commissions throughout Australia and internationally in the USA, UK and Germany. Examples of his art are held by the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, among other key collections, as well as internationally in the print collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the British Museum, London.
- [Encounters Never Random by Chrysogonus Siddha Malilang](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/encounters-never-random-by-chrysogonus-siddha-malilang/) - Chrysogonus Siddha Malilang was a nomad writer and translator before finally settling in in Southern Sweden. He started writing professionally - as a journalist - at an early age of 12, mainly motivated by an innocent wish of seeing his name printed in newspaper. After writing a number of short stories for various newspapers, he
- [chalk borders by Sarah St Vincent Welch](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/chalk-borders-by-sarah-st-vincent-welch/) - Sarah St Vincent Welch’s chalk borders is playful and soulful, and explores borders, frames and boundaries. chalk borders includes spare poems engaging with places from her #litchalk practice, where she chalks poems on the footpaths at art festivals in an ekphrasis of place, treating the whole environment as an artwork. These and longer poems engage with the tenuous lines drawn between art and life, the animate and inanimate, inside and outside, and present and past. chalk borders is inhabited by a love of existence and hope.
- [Codicil by Geoff Page](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/codicil-by-geoff-page/) - About the Translators: Chris Song is a poet, translator and editor based in Hong Kong. He has published four collections of poetry and many volumes of poetry in translation. Song received an "Extraordinary Mention" at Italy's UNESCO-recognized Nosside World Poetry Prize 2013. More recently he won the Young Artist Award at the 2017 Hong Kong Arts Development Awards, presented by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council. Matthew Cheng is a Hong Kong poet and critic. His published work includes the poetry volumes First Book of Recollection, Second Book of Recollection, and Recollections. The former Vice-Chair of the Hong Kong Film Critics Society, in 2013 he received the Hong Kong Arts Development Award for Best Artist (Arts Criticism).
- [After Han Shan by Greg McLaren](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/after-han-shan-by-greg-mclaren/) - Greg McLaren’s most recent book, After Han Shan and other poems (2012), draws in part from his long and ongoing engagement with the Chinese poetic tradition, and plays out a re-imagination of Han Shan's poems in an Australian cultural landscape, the NSW Hunter Valley Coalfields that McLaren grew up in.
- [The Right Wrong Notes by Nathan Curnow](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/the-right-wrong-notes-by-nathan-curnow/) - The Right Wrong Notes is a selection of poems from Nathan's previous collections: No Other Life But This, The Ghost Poetry Project, and RADAR. Also including some more recent pieces, the collection represents fifteen years of writing about family, fear and love, with Dan Disney describing the poems as 'suffused with sensuality and sense-making but also, most importantly, generosity'. Cover Shot by Michelle Dunn Photography Author photo by Nicholas Walton-Healey
- [Walking Through Fences by James Walton](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/walking-through-fences-by-james-walton/) - 'The current pocket book series are handsome productions that do the quality of the poetry proud. James Walton, one of the best lyrical poets going around at the moment is, ironically enough, in a less lyrical mood for much of this book, tending toward the darker, knottier more jagged aspects of the human experience. There is a great sense of history, of that fourth dimension to the human experience, that pervades this collection, and the "Cicero" poems are perhaps where Walton's innate lyricism shines through best in the eyes of this reviewer. It is a powerful collection, and a lovely thing to be able to carry around in your pocket and open at random when the world before you appears a little too drab and washed out.' Justin Lowe from a Bluepepper review - 'The Kids are Alright'.
- [Perfectly Bruised by Melinda Smith](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/perfectly-bruised-by-melinda-smith/) - Perfectly Bruised is a bi-lingual selection of Melinda Smith’s work between 2001 and 2019, in English and Mandarin. Her poetry shifts between multiple voices, perspectives, and forms, by turns quirky, witty, tender and forceful. The judges of the Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Award described her as ‘a major new poet’ and her work as ‘full of unexpected and richly varied pleasures’, praising ‘its range of technique and tone’ and ‘its depth of ideas, imagery and emotion’. In this selection from her work the reader is often surprised, and sometimes disoriented – but never bored. Translated by Karen Kun and Beibei Chen. Karen, Kun Teng Teng graduated and was awarded Master of Philosophy from the University of Macao. She is an English teacher and has worked in various poetry translation projects. Beibei Chen graduated and was awarded Doctor of Philosophy from UNSW, Australia. She is a literary critic, poet and a university lecturer in ECNU, Shanghai. Her critical works and poems have been published on Hua Wen Wen Xue, Westerly, Southerly and Antipodes.
- [Mannequin's Guide to Utopias by Dan Disney](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/mannequins-guide-to-utopias-by-dan-disney/) - Dan Disney’s most recent books are accelerations & inertias (Vagabond Press, 2021) and the anthology New Directions in Contemporary Australian Poetry (co-edited with Matthew Hall; Palgrave, 2021). His writing appears in Angelaki, Kenyon Review, Antipodes, Orbis Litterarum, and CounterText, and he is a regular reviewer with World Literature Today. He teaches with the English Literature Program at Sogang University, in Seoul.
- [Letters in Language by Harold Legaspi](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/letters-in-language-by-harold-legaspi/) - Letters in Language re-iterates what is possible in the prose poem and autography, and is intended to evoke cultural memory. The Tagalog (Filipino) mirroring the English translations are intended to provoke monolingual speakers to question, as it conveys Harold Legaspi’s identity, being bi-lingual, in a manner of speaking, to tell his story in a language he almost forgot through the migration process into Australia. By conveying meaning in two languages, his writing functions in the most concrete way, through exemplifying not abandoning the language that raised him in a land now foreign to him.
- [Far and Wild by Irina Frolova](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/far-and-wild-by-irina-frolova/) - This book speaks to the experience of immigration and a search for belonging. It explores the nature of language as performative of place and consciousness, and raises the question of gendered cultural othering: what is it like to navigate Russian identity as a woman in a western country? It examines the stereotype of a Russian bride, who is seen as both submissive and a threat. Far and Wild looks at archetypes through cultural and feminist lenses.
- [For Unity by Beatrice Machet](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/for-unity-by-beatrice-machet/) - Béatrice Machet is a French poet and performer, and translator. She has fourteen poetry books to her credit, one of them is dedicated to her 2011 stay in Macau. Since 1996 she is involved with Native American people and has made contacts with contemporary Native authors and collaborated with them in order to spread their words as far as in china and translate their works into French. She is used to collaborating with artists coming from different disciplines such as dancers and choreographers, visual artists, actors, musicians and composers in order to make up poetry recitals that she performs in France and abroad during poetry festivals or in theaters. She teaches creative writing, gives master classes in theater academies, goes from writing residencies to different visiting fellowships and spends her time between Macau, the United States and France.
- [Belief by Les Wicks](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/belief-by-les-wicks/) - …because his eye is withering and direct, Wicks gives his subjects a dignity and specificity that many a contemporary Australian novelist would envy. Adam Aitken, Communion Iconoclastic, irreverent, but always vigorous and compelling. Margaret Bradstock an elaborate mosaic where the tiles are words; paradoxes, satire and the vernacular adorn the pages of this beautifully crafted book. Beatriz Copello clever and brutal – an unflinching examination of human belief, in all of its horror and beauty. Judith Nangala Crispin …Belief displays an accomplished elder statesman of Australian poetry laying out with disarming agreeableness some of the fundamental questions of the near future. Often playful, sometimes circular, always self-aware in an optimistic rather than despairing way… Lucas Smith, Plumwood Mountain
- [Between Yes and No by Philip Salom](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/between-yes-and-no-by-philip-salom/) - Between Yes and No is a selection of 17 poems, some short, some longer, over 38 pages. Each poem has an English version shown in parallel with a translation into Mandarin by one of the two translators, Chris Song Zijiang and Iris Fan Xing. The editor of this innovative series is Christopher (Kit) Kelen.
- [Anyworld by Pam Brown](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/anyworld-by-pam-brown/) - Anyworld is a pocket collection of ten poems that were previously published in various magazines and chapbooks in the first decade of the 21st century. It's a sample of poems that are a bricolage comprising multiple registers of self-awareness, observation, social critique, literary memory and sudden incisive humour. A kind of layering of meanings describes much of the action in the poems, as the ordinary surfaces of the day radiate messages prismatically, even as they resist symbolism in favor of an embodied materiality in pastiche. These poems provide excellent company for public transport trips, solo café visits and for skiving off from dull lectures. "...Brown’s sensibility has something in common with that of the theorist of hyperreality [Jean Baudrillard]—though with the interesting difference that mass-media events, along with scientific and technological imagery, hardly figure in her work. What Brown is concerned with are effects on the most transient and miniature level of perception, and the way these accumulate over quotidian time. In this or Anyworld." Jal Nicholl, Cordite Poetry Review "Reading Sappho or Li Po or Pam Brown you think ‘Yes of course, this is how to write’ and I’ll just move with the same lightness’ and ‘I can loft some glitter-bit into the poem and ‘I can leap like that’ and then you can’t (but you’re still happier for having imagined it)." Rachel Loden (author of Hotel Imperium and Dick of the Dead)
- [Almost Everything I Know by Mark Tredinnick](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/almost-everything-i-know-by-mark-tredinnick/) - A selection of Mark’s poems—including, “Maybe,” “The Wombat Vedas,” “News of the World,” “Soft Bombs,” “Catching Fire,” “The Kingfisher,” and “Walking Underwater”—along with immaculate translations into Chinese by Isabelle Li.
- [A Pocket Diary by John Bennett](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/995/) - These poems are all dated, some even give the times when they were written, as part of a daily practice that investigates our interconnected environments. John gained a PhD for 'A New Defence of Poetry' which attacked the myth of poetry as being above and beyond normal language use and its claims to transcend the ordinary and everyday. These environments can be traced at: photovoltaicpoetry.com.au Judith Beveridge has commented: “John’s abilities to build transformative connections and the way in which these elements have been so organically integrated . . . is a tribute to the poet's language skills and the richness of his imagination. We felt there was a strong sense of vision, an impressive array of knowledge and a deeply connected sensibility.”
- [Liberating Websites $100 Voucher](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/liberating-websites-100-voucher/) - We design and build affordable effective websites for not-for-profit organisations, small to medium sized businesses and professional practices. Visit us at liberatingwebsites.com.au You’re in control. You can learn to easily add to and amend your website or we can do as much or as little editing as you want. 8% of your purchase is retained by Flying Islands Poetry Community to help fund its activities including the publication of the Flying Islands Pocket Poets Series. The 8% also covers credit card processing fees and GST on the commission.
- [Not for Profit Bookkeeping $100 Voucher](https://flyingislandspocketpoets.com.au/product/not-for-profit-bookkeeping-100-voucher/) - Not-for-Profit Bookkeeping provides accounting, bookkeeping and BAS Agent services to not-for-profit entities and small and micro businesses. The principal of the practice, John Burke, is a Fellow of Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand with over 35 years of experience. Our hourly rate is $45 per hour including GST. This rate is negotiable. When you buy this voucher john will be notified and he will contact you regarding arrangements for providing the bookkeeping and accounting services. 8% is retained by Flying Islands to help fund the publication of the Flying Islands Pocket Poets Series. The 8% also cover credit card processing charges and GST on the commission.
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