Four Oceans, Toby Davidson’s second collection, confirms his reputation as one of the most expansive and radical voices in the emerging generation of Australian poets. It moves from Western to Eastern Australia and overseas through finely-wrought long sequences and experiments in form which bear stark witness to the present moment and ask us how we got here. You can read some poems from Four Oceans here.  Buy the book online here.  Toby Davidson is a senior lecturer in Australian literature at Macquarie University. He is the editor of Francis Webb’s Collected Poems (UWA Pu ..read more

Saddiq Dzukogi with Verity La Poetry Editors Michele Seminara and Robbie Coburn Wineglass When your mother found strands of your hair hung up in the teeth of your comb, your father squirreled them into a wineglass. It bites him hard that your life happened like an hourglass with only a handful of sand— this split to the seam of his body, a split of darkness that won’t kill him but squeezes adrenaline into his veins, so he lives through the pain of your absence. He’s not all right to speak. His voice rims with bereavement, and he wants to sing by your grave, child, now that birds blow songs th ..read more

REBECCA JESSEN: In this episode of the Verity La Poetry Podcast, Podcast Producer Alice Allan talks with Rebecca Jessen about her first collection Ask Me About the Future, out now from UQP. Rebecca and Alice discuss the idea of a ‘queer utopia’ along with issues like where mental health intersects with queerness, visibility, queer elders, socioeconomics and gender. Rebecca reads her poem Triage and shares In the dream by Jenny Johnson, along with ‘I am not myself at all’ from the new collection.   Listen to the episode here.  Missed our earlier episodes? Listen here! Podcast producer ..read more

QPF 2019: In this episode of the Verity La Poetry Podcast, Verity La Managing Editor Michele Seminara is joined at the 2019 Queensland Poetry Festival by poet Andy Jackson and Disrupt editors Amanda Tink and Gaele Sobott to discuss the intersection between artistic work and disability. Their conversation spans not only the challenges disabled creatives can sometimes face, but also the erasure of disability from discussions of Australian literary fixtures such as Henry Lawson, Judith Wright and Les Murray, plus the positive aspects of being a creator with a disability, and much more.      In th ..read more

JORDIE ALBISTON: In this episode of the Verity La Poetry Podcast, Podcast Producer Alice Allan and Poetry Co-editor Robbie Coburn talk with Jordie Albiston about the relationship between poetry and mathematics, the place of mathematical poetry in Australia, and the role of writing courses in a poet’s development. Jordie also discusses her poem cobalt, which will be included in her next collection Element: The Atomic Weight and Radius of Love (forthcoming from Puncher & Wattmann), and reads Don Paterson’s poem Luing.  Missed our earlier episodes? Listen here! Podcast producer: Alice Allan ..read more

KERRY REED-GILBERT: In this edition of the Verity La Poetry Podcast, Managing Editor Michele Seminara talks with poet, activist and Wiradjuri Elder Kerry Reed-Gilbert about her work and the place of First Nations writing in Australia today. Kerry discusses The First Nations Australia Writers Network (FNAWN) along with the Us Mob Writing Group and their book Too Deadly. Kerry reads her poem ‘I Know You’, published on Verity La, as well as ‘Just leave your mark here’ from the Australian Book Review and ‘Who’s Responsible’ from her collection Talkin’ About Country. Kerry also reads ‘A New True An ..read more