Whitmore Press

10/03/2026

Review by Dan Disney of Kevin Brophy's An Inventory of Longing in the renowned and long-running World Literature Today. Disney writes thoughtfully of the poems' 'deep dives into immanence [that] remain oceanic in their calm'.

Read the full review, freely available, at https://worldliteraturetoday.org/2026/march/inventory-longing-kevin-brophy

Kevin's book has that rare achievement for a poetry collection of going to a reprint. (Yes, we're raking it in here!) So, further hot-off-the-press copies are available at https://whitmorepress.com/titles

If you haven't done so already, please consider availing yourself of a superb poetry collection while also supporting a small Australian poetry press.

Whitmore Press. 2025. 104 pages.

23/07/2025

Late notice, but the Canberra launch of Kevin Brophy's new collection, An Inventory of Longing, will take place tomorrow (Thursday 24 July) at Manning Clark House, 11 Tasmanian Circle, Forrest, ACT at 7pm.

Jen Webb, Distinguished Professor of Creative Practice at the University of Canberra, will launch Kevin's book, copies of which will be available for purchase on the night. All welcome!

16/07/2025

In The Conversation, Craig Billingham has provided an intelligent and sensitive review/reading of Kevin Brophy's An Inventory of Longing, published recently by Whitmore Press, focusing in particular on parts one and four of Kevin's collection. He states that the collection 'is rich with imagery and felt experience, much of which is acutely affecting'. Generously, he also comments on the 'beautiful publication from Victoria’s Whitmore Press'. Link provided below.

An Inventory of Longing is available at https://whitmorepress.com/titles/

How is it that some of us are privileged and many are not? This subject is at the heart of a new collection of poetry.

12/06/2025

Martin Duwell provides a carefully considered, sensitive close reading of Kevin Brophy's An Inventory of Longing in his latest review-essay in Australian Poetry Review. It opens:

'There’s a good case for seeing Kevin Brophy as one of Australia’s most humane poets: humane in the double sense of being a sensitive and thoughtful human being in his poems but also in the sense of writing within a human-centred standpoint. That isn’t an easy thing to do since that kind of poetry has to fight against a drive towards blandness. Brophy has always managed this well: there is usually a lot more going on inside the poems than appears on the surface ...'

You can read the review, and many others by Martin Duwell (this really is a wonderful resource), freely online at http://www.australianpoetryreview.com.au/2025/06/kevin-brophy-an-inventory-of-longing/

Copies of Kevin's book are available at selected bookshops (Readings, Brunswick Bound, Gleebooks) and via the Whitmore Press website at https://whitmorepress.com/titles

Kevin Brophy, An Inventory of Longing Full-length collection, 104 pp. $24.95 With its astonishing imagery, An Inventory of Longing reminds us that, even in the face of injustice and grief, delight …

26/05/2025

Kevin Brophy's 'An Inventory of Belonging' at Readings Carlton, where copies (some signed) are available. You can also find Kevin's collection – described by Sarah Day in Australian Book Review as a 'cause for celebration' – at Brunswick Bound and in Gleebooks Sydney.

22/04/2025

Sarah Day has written an incisive, and glowing, review of Kevin Brophy's An Inventory of Longing in the April issue of Australian Book Review. She comments on Kevin as 'a quintessential observer ... Driven by empathy, his observations, going back to his earliest books, embody a kindliness and camaraderie, a beguiling sense that we are all in this world together', and concludes that 'A new collection by Kevin Brophy is cause for celebration'.

You can read the full review in ABR at https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/abr-online/current-issue/1014-april-2025-no-474/13832-sarah-day-reviews-an-inventory-of-longing-by-kevin-brophy, where you'll also find Amanda Frances Johnson's review of Gutsy Girls, Josie McSkimming's memoir about her sister Dorothy Porter.

An Inventory of Longing is available on the Whitmore Press website at https://whitmorepress.com/titles

26/02/2025

Less than 24 hours until the launch of Kevin Brophy's new poetry collection, An Inventory of Longing, on Thursday 27 February, 6 pm, at Brunswick Bound in Melbourne. All welcome! Kevin will be in conversation with prize-winning poet A. Frances Johnson, but you can also hear Kevin discussing his work in a conversation with David Ades, which is available on YouTube via the link below.

It's a long and engrossing interview, but you may in particular like to hear Kevin reading from the title poem of his new collection late in the interview - at the 1 hour and 27 minute mark to be precise.

Wishing you happy reading, and listening.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuVcEQY_Hdw

27/04/2024

My (Anthony Lynch's) review of Georgia Blain’s posthumously published story collection We All Lived in Bondi Then (Allen & Unwin Books) is in the April issue of Australian Book Review. I greatly admired the collection but, like many others, feel a great pang that (unless other works emerge from the drawer) we will not see more of Blain’s clean prose capturing her characters with wit, tenderness and insight. It was a privilege to review this collection. You can find the review online at the link below. (Yes, there’s a paywall to access the full review, but taking out a subscription helps support ABR and its writers.)

When Georgia Blain died at the age of fifty-one in 2016, the reading public was robbed of a superb prose writer in her prime. Her final and, some consider, best novel, Between a Wolf and a Dog (2016), achieved wide critical acclaim. Shortly after Blain succumbed to brain cancer, that novel went on t...

08/03/2024

For World Poetry Day in Geelong, 21 March, a reading of mostly Geelong-based poets: Jo Langdon, Brendan Ryan, Lyn Chatham, Julie Maclean, Anthony Lynch and international virtual poet-in-residence Alice Eaves. Renowned poet and critic David McCooey will be MC. The evening kicks off at 6pm at Geelong Library for what should be an engaging and happy event.

07/02/2024

'You can’t really be in favour of both democracy and billionaires, because democracy requires equal opportunity in order to participate, and extreme wealth gives its holders unfathomable advantages with little accountability. I’ve long believed that democracy depends in part on co-existing with strangers and people unlike you, on feeling that you have something in common with them. The internet has helped people withdraw from diverse communities and shared experiences to huddle in like-minded groups, including groups focused on hating those they see as unlike them, while encouraging the disinhibition of anonymity.'

- Rebecca Solnit, 'In the shadow of Silicon Valley', London Review of Books

I don’t know whether these billionaires know what a city is, but I do know that they have laid their hands on the city...

18/03/2023

We’ve got that already, he said. He thumbed his chin. We’re thinking big, he added, and scratched his broad chest, as if within that cavity lay another world, a deep space of possibility.