As the seas rise, the fight intensifies to save the Pacific Ocean's Marshall Islands from being devoured by the waters around them. At the same time, activists are raising their poetic voices against decades of colonialism, environmental destruction, and social injustice.
Marshallese poet and activist Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner's writing highlights the traumas of colonialism, racism, forced migration, the legacy of American nuclear testing, and the impending threats of climate change. Bearing witness at the front lines of various activist movements inspires her work and has propelled her poetry onto international stages, where she has performed in front of audiences ranging from elementary school students to more than a hundred world leaders at the United Nations Climate Summit.
The poet connects us to Marshallese daily life and tradition, likening her poetry to a basket and its essential materials. Her cultural roots and her family provides the thick fiber, the structure of the basket. Her diasporic upbringing is the material which wraps around the fiber, an essential layer to the structure of her experiences. And her passion for justice and change, the passion which brings her to the front lines of activist movements--is the stitching that binds these two experiences together.
Iep Jāltok will make history as the first published book of poetry written by a Marshallese author, and it ushers in an important new voice for justice.
With its rich selection from each of Sarah Holland-Batt's books of poetry up to her Stella prize-winning collection The Jaguar (2022), this volume will introduce one of Australia's best-known and widely read poets to American readers for the first time.
Marked by her distinctive lyric intensity, metaphorical dexterity and linguistic mastery, Holland-Batt's cosmopolitan poems engage with questions of loss and extinction, violence and erasure. From haunted post-colonial landscapes in Australia to brutal animal hierarchies in the cloud forests of Nicaragua to the devastations and transfigurations of her father's long illness, Holland-Batt fearlessly probes the body's animal endurance, appetites and metamorphoses, and our human place within the natural order of things. Her portrayal of a much loved father trying to cope with Parkinson's
Disease has touched the hearts of many people who would never usually
read a book of poetry.
The Jaguar: Selected Poems brings together the finest work from her debut volume Aria (2008), with its minimalistic interrogations of the tyrannies of memory; the searching external and internal landscapes of The Hazards (2015); and the fierce, unflinching elegies of The Jaguar (2022), which challenge us to view ruthless witness as a form of love. As John Kinsella has said, 'Holland-Batt is one of the best poets writing not only in Australia but anywhere in the world in English. This is an art of necessity, of belief, and of artisan-like commitment.'
The Tears That Water My Growth, written by Aria Amos, is a collection of poetry that expresses the emotional odyssey of the author after experiencing an immense loss in her youth. These poems detail sentimental, poignant, and moving passages that reach into the deepest recesses of one's heart and reflects on the lessons found within to not only process, but to grow into the person the author is today, and who they will become in the future.
An anthem to those who have been mistreated by the ones who should have held you tightest, This Time You Save Yourself speaks honeyed words to your inner child. Zara Bas's highly awaited second work compiles say-it-as-it-is messages, reassuring reminders and essays to help you reclaim the power you hadn't realised went missing.
Simple, raw and relatable, This Time You Save Yourself touches on themes of healing after trauma, power dynamics, rebuilding a sense of self and finding hope in the bleakest of times.
The Sorry Tale of the Mignonette tells the tale of the author's great-grandmother's cousin, Richard Parker, a cabin-boy on a yacht being sailed from Southampton to Sydney in 1884 for Jack Want a prominent New South Wales barrister and politician. The Mignonette foundered in the South Atlantic far from land, and after nineteen days with no sight of any other vessel to rescue them, and with all four in a terrible state, the captain and mate decided to murder and eat poor Richard. Days later the remaining sailors were rescued and returned to Falmouth to face justice. The original trial at Exeter Assize was moved to The Old Bailey due to huge public interest and the need to clarify the Empire's maritime legal framework regarding what had been common practice.
The Sorry Tale of the Mignonette takes place in the West Country, at sea and in Australia. It explores power relationships, individual motives, survivor guilt and self-justification, and justice and divine retribution. Poetry heightens the tension and drives the narrative telling the personal and human story of one of the most important legal judgements in English Law-that necessity is not a defence for murder-and is still taught at Universities The Sorry Tale of the Mignonette tells the tale of the author's great-grandmother's cousin, Richard Parker, a cabin-boy on a yacht being sailed from Southampton to Sydney in 1884 for Jack Want a prominent New South Wales barrister and politician. The Mignonette foundered in the South Atlantic far from land, and after nineteen days with no sight of any other vessel to rescue them, and with all four in a terrible state, the captain and mate decided to murder and eat poor Richard. Days later the remaining sailors were rescued and returned to Falmouth to face justice. The original trial at Exeter Assize was moved to The Old Bailey due to huge public interest and the need to clarify the Empire's maritime legal framework regarding what had been common practice.
The Sorry Tale of the Mignonette takes place in the West Country, at sea and in Australia. It explores power relationships, individual motives, survivor guilt and self-justification, and justice and divine retribution. Poetry heightens the tension and drives the narrative telling the personal and human story of one of the most important legal judgements in English Law-that necessity is not a defence for murder-and is still taught at Universities globally.