Sunday 9 September 2012

Undertow - Now available! Plus launch details.



 
Undertow, my first poetry book is now available! Published by Walleah Press.

You are warmly invited to the launch, by Gina Mercer, on Thursday 11th October 2012, 5:30pm at The Hobart Bookshop, Salamanca Place. Free drinks and nibbles provided. All welcome.



 



Comments on Undertow

"With Undertow, Susan Austin sets herself adrift on the current of her experience. Her poems capture moments of delight and sorrow with equal honesty, and her incisive language peels away the veneer of routine and expectation to reveal some astonishing truths. Austin is a masterful poetic conjurer, concealing profound emotional insights in the patterns of everyday living. She has perfected the art of drawing the simplest words into the service of her compelling revelations, and her book is an impressive debut achievement."

- Cameron Hindrum

"Susan Austin's poems penetrate to the core of the human condition: the dysfunctional, the erotic, the often unnoticed magic of the everyday.  Her perceptions are acute and originally presented, but what really stands out is the compassion which informs her celebration of the variousness of this world."

- Tim Thorne

Saturday 8 September 2012

Undertow Acknowledgments

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors of the following anthologies and journals where many of these poems first appeared (sometimes in earlier versions): Famous Reporter, Green Left Weekly, The Brew, Poet’s Republic, Blue Giraffe, Poems from the Dig, Tasmanian Times, FAW Anthology ‘A Net of Hands’, Poetry Matters, Hecate and Poetrix.

Special thanks to Dr Gina Mercer for her excellent feedback and assistance with this manuscript. I’d also like to thank the Tasmanian Writers Centre, the Fellowship of Australian Writers Tasmania, members of my group Poetry Diggers and the other Tasmanian poets who have encouraged me or provided me with valuable opportunities, especially Ralph Wessman, Ben Walter, Liz Winfield and Cameron Hindrum. Thanks to my mother for buying me that hard-cover exercise book that got me started when I was eight years old, to my partner Jeremy and to other friends and family for their support.

Friday 7 September 2012

Anti-war poetry essay

 
 
My essay on anti-war poetry, printed in the Fellowship of Australian Writers (Tas) newsletter, May/June 2006