Local poet garners international reviews

Local Australian poet Murray Alfredson is off and racing with his second international review!  It's hard to hold a good poet down.


"Certainly not for the faint-hearted, Gleaming Clouds by Murray Alfredson is the work of an unsparingly brave poet who looks at life, just as it is and hard in face. With impressive and sometimes daring linguistic virtuosity, forever looking to amplify experience, find meaningful resonance, explore faith in its fullest sense and take honest comfort wherever possible.

Alfredson's translations from old Norse and 18th century German texts are also touchingly excellent - not only technically, but equally persuasive in their capture of nuance and a beautiful sensitivity of tone that seems to speaks directly to the very soul of our forebears.

[The] Gleaming Clouds is altogether a marvellous and impressively unique creative achievement that, for me, makes sense of one poets life lived always ambitiously and with consistent integrity.

You will struggle to find a robust literary read quite like this anywhere else in the contemporary canon and for that reason, it has my highest recommendation." 

- Scott Hastie, Writer and Poet, Angel Voices

The Gleaming Clouds by Murray Alfredson

The value of a 'New & Selected' collection

As Geoff Page wrote in The Australian this weekend ('New and selected Australian poetry'), the 'New & Selected' poetry collection always presents the interesting question of how to order the pieces - whether to order them chronologically (oldest to newest) or by topic, etc.  Will the reader prefer to read the poet's story from the beginning, or do they want to start with the latest exciting chapter?

Page says award-winning poet Jane Williams got it right in Days Like These: New and Selected 1998-2013 (IP, 2013).  She ordered her poems in straight chronological order, beginning with her first collection.  Take a look at this great review in the article:

'Days Like These: New and selected 1998-2013' by award-winning poet Jane Williams

"Days Like These, Jane Williams's 'New & Selected' has a rather different trajectory. Twenty-three years younger than [Rae Desmond] Jones, Williams did not publish her first book until 1998. A relatively late-starter needs to make up for lost time and a well-edited New & Selected is often a good way to consolidate a reputation. Thus Williams's straight chronological ordering here serves her well.

Williams' first collection, Outside Temple Boundaries (1998), from which she has retained only eight poems, shows, in comparison with more recent work, a certain tentativeness of manner and a poet a little subdued by her influences.

From The Last Tourist (2006) onwards, however, Williams is the mature artist with a style very much her own (though her preference for minimal punctuation is widely shared these days).

Williams also has an unfailingly personal slant on her subject matter, along with a talent for evoking character and situation in a short space. In poems such as 'Thirst', 'The Begging Bowl' and 'To the Burglar Boys' Williams's concerns are often not unlike those of Jones, namely the almost-accidental by-blows of an otherwise prosperous society.

There is also, however, a welcome degree of humour in Williams's work, and an unapologetic celebration of life, most notably in 'Ag Borradh', dedicated to a man
"back from the coma
which held (him) like worry
 
back from the fog ...
... back to bud and to blossom ...
... called back to the world
and its quivering song
praise the light we grow into
the dark we grow from".
 
This balancing of light and dark is a mark of Williams's maturity as a technically versatile and forceful poet."

- Geoff Page, The Australian

Latest review of speculative fiction novel 'Blood' by Peter Kay

One of our Amazon readers posted this about Blood by Peter Kay:

"This is truly a brilliant and amazingly well-written book. I found the story most intriguing, especially when it involved talking severed hands and heads, and a delightful love story thrown into the mix. I also felt that Peter Kay's words flowed very well and it all came to a great ending. It is a definite "will read again" book."
- Oklahoma reader, Amazon reader reviews

Blood is a magical realism novel involving time travel, an invisible crocodile, a talking severed hand, singing paintings and big wave surfing off the wild coast of Tasmania.

International review of 'The Gleaming Clouds' by Murray Alfredson

Murray Alfredson's poetry makes you stop and think.  Popular UK reviewer Valerie Penny agrees:

"When this anthology first came to my attention, I had no idea what to expect from it.  Whatever it was the works far exceeded my expectations and I highly recommend this collection of poems to poetry lovers everywhere.

 

I was excited and amazed by the wide variety of styles of poetry: each at a thought provoking level.  The anthology displays a sound knowledge and understanding of the important ideologies and beliefs of the world.

 

I was particularly interested by Isaac’s boyhood.  It addresses issues that had concerned me and I was delighted to learn of someone else voicing the thoughts so eloquently. 

Another poem that fascinated me was Bi- meets uni-polar.  My cousin is bi-polar and I have lived with clinical depression for years. This poem aptly reflects many of our conversations!

I have already read and enjoyed The Sandwich several times, on each occasion  discovering new images, aspirations and impressions.  So few lines weave so detailed a pattern.

 

One of the translations he includes is Presence, one of my favourite Goethe poems.  I enjoyed the translation, and the excuse to re-read the original."

 

- Valerie Penny's Book Reviews

Read the full review here!
 

Find out more about The Gleaming Clouds here.

Wonderful review of 'The Sky Dreamer' by Anne Morgan and Céline Eimann

We're delighted to see that The Sky Dreamer continues to be popular with education professionals.  With its themes of learning to cope with difficult life circumstances, it's a great story for any library, classroom, or child therapist's office.

This latest review comes from OZTL, the Australian Teacher Librarian Network.
The Sky Dreamer is also available in French, French-English bilingual, and German translated editions.

"This is a most sensitive, alluring book about a child dealing with death.  Written following the death of the author's daughter, it acknowledges that grief is a long journey which may be shared but which is travelled alone.  It can be stormy and seemingly endless but there is eventually acceptance and comfort and a way forward.
 
The beautiful, delicate pictures mirror the mood of the story perfectly - monochrome in Liam's dark days, and the introduction of colour when Cassie appears in the Sky Dreamer hints at a glimmer of hope and happiness.  The chaos and colour of the storms reflect Liam's thinking and feelings, but as they merge into gentler colours and less frenetic images the reader gets a sense of growing peace and calm.
 
Too often our students travel their own version of Luke's journey - this is a book that might help them navigate it more easily, showing them that whatever feelings they have are OK and that they are not alone.  That, in itself, might offer comfort."

- Barbara Braxton, Teacher Librarian, 500 Hats and The Bottom Shelf Educational Blog

The Sky Dreamer, beautifully illustrated by Céline Eimann

The Planets are Aligning in Banff!

More international recognition for David P Reiter's latest work!

David's recent win at the 2012 Western Australian Premier's Book Awards 2012 for the My Planets Reunion Memoir set the stage. And 2014 is looking to be bigger and better!

The International Autobiography and Biography Association (IABA) Conference has just invited David to present Planets to a global audience in Banff, Alberta, ironically, at the very place where he composed the work in 2012, in collaboration with the digital media staff at the Banff Centre for the Arts. The conference will showcase life writers such as Patrick Lane and Fred Wah, who David knew from his years in Canada. A key supporting organisation of the conference is the University of Alberta, where David did his Master's degree.

The Banff Centre will be promoting his work as "Made in Banff" and there are plans for the University to highlight in their alumni magazine.

IP also sends an extended congratulations to David, and Sona Babajanyan, for their work in Bringing Down the Wall. The heart-warming picture book about a young boy taking responsibility to resolve a family feud has been selected by the Canada's Children's Book Centre as a Best Book for Teens and Children! Bringing Down the Wall has also been included on The Chief Minister's Reading List in the ACT.

While in Western Canada, David hopes to tour schools and libraries to give readings his wonderful children's books Bringing Down the Wall and, hot off the press Tiger Takes the Big Apple (Project Earth-mend Series: Book 4).

We're accepting expressions of interest from schools and libraries for stops on the upcoming tour (mid May through early June). We're also offering the hardback edition of Bringing Down the Wall to them for a mere CA$20 (the same price listed by the CCBC for the paperback edition) – and free postage. Interested? Please contact us on sales@ipoz.biz – we'd love to hear from you!

First international reading of 'My Planets'

I was delighted to have my first USA reading from My Planets at Op.Cit Bookshop in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

We had been staying with my long time friend David de Vaux and Molly at their cosy home on the other side of the Rockies, about an hour and half drive from Santa Fe, and David was kind enough to introduce my reading to the Op.Cit audience. It's a good vibe when browsers in the bookshop who weren't planning to attend the reading are drawn in to take a seat – and that's what happened with several people.

Here's the reading, which lasts about 30 minutes, filmed by my daughter Siobhan. Hope you enjoy it!

Key links: the book; the interactive website.