The Flowering Dark

In June, 5Islands publishes our first full collection of poetry, The Flowering Dark, by Eltham poet Sue Lockwood. It’s notoriously difficult to summarise a book of poems. We left that, on the book, to Audrey Molloy, Judy Beveridge, and Kate Middleton. You can see what Judy thought: we put it on the front cover. I’ve worked with Sue through a masterclass or two and a mentorship, so I know the poems—as they were and as they now are—like garden plants. I think the book is wonderful. It fits our bill at the press to publish poetry that is both intelligent and intelligible, sophisticated in thought and language and emotion but not arcane. It delights me to publish an emerging poet—this is Sue’s first collection—who is not young and who has spent a quarter of a century or more learning her art and cultivating these poems. Here’s what I’ve written about the book, some of it on the back cover:

This first collection is so finished, so full-grown, you’d swear it had been with you for years. The great joy of Sue Lockwood’s thoughtful, tender poems is the scent of earth on them, the carolling of birds, the fall of rain, the play of light, the names the river recalls, the slosh of the bucket, the texture of seaweed, the impasto of paint on canvas. Here is a poet of philosophical refinement and linguistic delicacy, who is happy to get her hands dirty.

The book, designed by Gerhard Bachfischer, is at the printer (McPhersons) as we speak. All going well, we will have copies available for sale late June. Watch for it at the 5Islands website, and watch out here and on the socials for news of launch events.

A collection by Mike Leibowitz follows in July; Bright Crockery Days, a collection of beautiful essays on the poems of Robert Gray (which I am reading and editing now) appears in August; Robyn Rowland’s new and moving collection Steep Curve publishes in September. And more to come before the year is out.