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5 Islands Press 📚Poetry for Everyone.
🖋️Poems that give us back to our lives, to each other, and to the world.

The Ease of Eggs, Benjamin Dodds’s third collection, will be launched at Benledi House, Glebe, on 28 September, by Debbi...
09/09/2025

The Ease of Eggs, Benjamin Dodds’s third collection, will be launched at Benledi House, Glebe, on 28 September, by Debbie Lim. Registration is now open:

https://www.5islandspress.com/event-details/book-launch-the-ease-of-eggs

In this book, Dodds finds the uncanny in the quotidian world, offers you a pair of Havaianas at midnight, extends a hand and asks you to join him.

The world Dodds witnesses and recalls in these tidy, playful lyric poems has a dignity and courtesy and unexpected kindness; there is casual violence and there are bodily functions; you stub your toe on the grotesque, the bizarre and the angular. Life goes the way one knows it in the burbs, but slower and a little quieter and more brightly lit; the contrast is high, the tone nostalgic and the set designs are trim and gorgeous.

Dodds’s poems are alert for the strange and quietly ecstatic inside the ordinary. The moments he manifests beguile and surprise; nothing feels quite the way it looks. His moments, though often everyday, shimmer, their past lives climbing out of their present incarnations: the difficult birth of a calf, a night walk in thongs, a ghosting or two, the dying of a dog, the bullying of a child, the drama of a bird in a classroom, the recollection of a mother’s bra, a science experiment, the arrival of rain to a suburban (strata title) balcony, two weeks with an antique stove, an afternoon in a natural history museum.

Dodds sees with a kindly eye, ready for mischief, alert for trouble, happy to help. The tenderness and acuity of his seeing, the playfulness of his shaping and the carefulness of his saying seem to invite a reader to compassion and gratitude and service. Nothing the poet preaches; just the lesson you might draw from the way he stands present in his life and world.

Find out more about this brilliant new book from the catalogue page on our website.

https://www.5islandspress.com/catalogue






The decision has been made. The inaugural Robert Gray Prize for Poetry was awarded last night, at an online event, to re...
28/08/2025

The decision has been made. The inaugural Robert Gray Prize for Poetry was awarded last night, at an online event, to renowned poet and teacher, Judith Beveridge, for her poem, “The Octopus”. After a great deal of hard work and deliberation, this truly exceptional poem was chosen unanimously from a field of over 500 poems by our three judges: Judith Nangala Crispin, Gareth Sion Jenkins and Tegan Gigante.

Commenting on Judith’s poem, the judges said

It met all our criteria, of a fine lyric poem crafted with elegance and intelligence … This poem engages the reader on a myriad of levels, employing taut narrative progression and vivid imagery, all the while imparting to the reader the wondrously complex way the creature interacts with its environment. Grounded in a particular instance of time, the intimate empathy felt by the speaker for the animal world is shockingly contrasted with the actions of the unthinking fishermen … Musical, sensual, and deliberate language serves a poem that never confounds the reader, inviting us all in to see and feel the scene with a devastating clarity. This is one of the great poems of our age, and we offer thanks for its submission and sincere congratulations for its placing as the winning poem among so many other superb offerings. May it be widely read for many years to come.  

From the shortlist of fifty poems, the judges also singled out five other poems for commendation.

Our congratulations to Judith; to the poets whose poems were commended (Jo Gardiner, Audrey Molloy and Helga Jermy); and to the other shortlisted poets. Our sincere thanks to the judges and all who submitted their poems for consideration.

All shortlisted poems will be published in our forthcoming Oystercatcher Two anthology, which will be published in December this year. Keep an eye out for it.







Live in Melbourne? Or down for the weekend? This is your chance to catch Robyn Rowland at the Cherry Teee Hotel. Robyn w...
19/08/2025

Live in Melbourne? Or down for the weekend? This is your chance to catch Robyn Rowland at the Cherry Teee Hotel. Robyn will read from "Steep Curve", her latest book, which was published by 5 Islands Press last year. If you haven't heard Robyn read from this tender but unflinching account of caring for her father during his final years, you owe it to yourself to get along. If you have, you will need no urging.
For further details, see the link in the bio.


We are now ready to announce the winner of the inaugural Robert Gray Prize for Poetry.  Our sincere thanks to all the ta...
15/08/2025

We are now ready to announce the winner of the inaugural Robert Gray Prize for Poetry. Our sincere thanks to all the talented poets who entered their poems for the prize, which is offered by 5 Islands Press to celebrate Robert Gray's contribution to Australian--and world--poetry. The number and quality of the entries is eloquent and apposite testimony to the esteem in which Robert is held.

We invite you to join us when we announce the winner of the prize online on 28 August at 6pm. All are welcome and registration for the event is free and simple: just use the link in the bio or the button provided on the home page of the 5 Islands Press website.


rowland



Steve Meyrick's debut collection, "Nowhere Near Damascus"--our most recent publication--will be  launched by 5 Islands P...
13/08/2025

Steve Meyrick's debut collection, "Nowhere Near Damascus"--our most recent publication--will be launched by 5 Islands Press Managing Editor, Mark Tredinnick, on 31 August. We would love you to join us for an afternoon of poetry, conversation and song--and, of course, a glass or two of wine to celebrate the occasion. This is a free event, and everyone is welcome, but, to help us with catering, please register using the link below or the button on the 5 Islands Press home page.

www.5islandspress.com/event-details/book-launch-nnd



rowland


It is always exciting to announce the publication of a new 5 Islands Press book, but I hope you will forgive  for being ...
09/08/2025

It is always exciting to announce the publication of a new 5 Islands Press book, but I hope you will forgive for being even more than usually excited about this one, as it is his own debut collection. For the same reason, he will say nothing more here about the book and why you should buy it: to find out more about it, please use the link that follows, which will take you to the catalogue entry containing a description of the book and some comments on it.

https://www.5islandspress.com/books/nowhere-near-damascus

What a privilege it was yesterday to see "Nowhere Near Damascus" take its place in the growing 5 Islands Press collection at Collins Booksellers, Thirroul, alongside those of such superb poets as .rowland, and .kornberger. And how splendid the books look; all praise to our brilliant book designer, .

…





…

We are excited to announce the fifty poems that made it to the final round of judging for the inaugural Robert Gray Priz...
07/08/2025

We are excited to announce the fifty poems that made it to the final round of judging for the inaugural Robert Gray Prize for Poetry.  The shortlist can be viewed on our website (link in bio).

All of these poems will appear in our Oystercatcher Two anthology, which will be published later this year.  Our congratulations to the finalists; and our thanks to them and the many fine poets who submitted poems that, in what was an extremely competitive field, did not make the shortlist. 

The winner of the prize will be announced at a virtual event to be held on 28 August 2025.  Details of the event and the registration link will be posted on our website next week. Please keep an eye out for them.


rowland


A quick reminder that, this Sunday, Gleebooks will host an event featuring Mark Roberts and Kai Jensen—the authors of tw...
04/08/2025

A quick reminder that, this Sunday, Gleebooks will host an event featuring Mark Roberts and Kai Jensen—the authors of two of the recent publications from 5 Islands Press: "The Office of Literary Endeavours" and "The Zebra Path of Tree Light", respectively.

Readings from both these books will be complemented and enlivened by conversation between the poets about, among other things, where the poems came from and how they came to find their final shape. The event will be introduced by 5 Islands Press Managing Editor, Mark Tredinnick. This is a free event but registration via Gleebooks events page is essential (link in bio)

We would love you to join us for a drink, nibbles and an entertaining and instructive afternoon.


rowland

We are delighted to announce that renowned poet Dr Robyn Rowland AO is returning to the Illawarra and will be reading fr...
27/07/2025

We are delighted to announce that renowned poet Dr Robyn Rowland AO is returning to the Illawarra and will be reading from her latest collection, Steep Curve, at Collins Booksellers, Thirroul. Steep Curve, Robyn's twelfth book of poetry, was published by 5 Islands Press in 2024.

The book, “a collection of final father poems”, centres on the two-and-a-half years between Robyn’s decision to return from Ireland to be close to her centenarian father and his death. Robyn lived with her father in her childhood home, which he had built 65 years before, acting first as his companion, then as his carer. The poems trace the course of this changing relationship through physical and emotional challenges, anger, frustration, loss and love.

Robyn’s father, Norm Rowland OAM, was a widely respected local identity, amongst whose many contributions to the region was the founding of Warrigal, a provider of not-for-profit aged care facilities in the Illawarra and beyond.

“Heartachingly beautiful, wistfully wise and meticulously crafted, this book dexterously captures the humility, grace and wisdom a daughter divines in tending to an ageing, then dying, father.” (Dr. Anne Casey)

“Robyn Rowland never shirks from the details, the hard facts, the sting of the sublime. Steep Curve is a book of remarkable moments and enduring love.” (Dr. Kevin Brophy)

You can catch Robyn talking about the book on Radio Illawarra at 10:30 am tomorrow (28 July). Registration and other details for the reading on 3 August are given on the Events page of the Collins BookseÄşlers, Thirroul website https://thirroul.collinsbooks.com.au/pages/4102-EVENTS.
rowland



5 Islands Press is excited to collaborate with Gleebooks in this event featuring Mark Roberts and Kai Jensen, the author...
22/07/2025

5 Islands Press is excited to collaborate with Gleebooks in this event featuring Mark Roberts and Kai Jensen, the authors, respectively, of two of our most recent publications, The Office of Literary Endeavours and The Zebra Path of Tree Light. Readings from both of these books will be complemented and enlivened by conversation between the poets about, among other things, where the poems came from and how they came to find their final shape. The event will be introduced by 5 Islands Press Managing Editor, Mark Tredinnick. Why not join us for a drink, nibbles and an entertaining and instructive afternoon?

This is a free event but registration via Gleebooks events page is essential. Here is the link.

https://gleebooks.com.au/event/kai-jensen-mark-roberts-double-launch.



Jennifer Kornberger’s superb collection, The Twilight Observatory, arrived from the printer this week, and will be launc...
12/07/2025

Jennifer Kornberger’s superb collection, The Twilight Observatory, arrived from the printer this week, and will be launched by Liana Joy Christensen later this month. The details are:
Date: 25 July, 2025
Time: 6pm
Location: Corner Room, Ode to Sirens, P&O Hotel, cnr High and Moat Streets, Fremantle.

This is a free event and everyone is welcome. There is no formal registration process, but it is useful for us to know how many to expect. If you intend to come, and have not already informed Jennifer directly, please let us know by emailing [email protected]. We look forward to seeing you there.

You can read more about Jennifer and The Twilight Observatory on the 5 Islands Press website (www.5islandspress.com/books/the-twilight-observatory).


kornberger

This week, on the Booktrail (link in bio), Rosanna McGlone writes about the places behind six of the poems that she disc...
19/06/2025

This week, on the Booktrail (link in bio), Rosanna McGlone writes about the places behind six of the poems that she discusses with their authors in her exploration of the poetic craft, The Making of a Poem. If you are looking for additional insight into the creation stories of these diverse and superbly crafted poems, a visit to this short read on the Booktrail should definitely be on your to-do list https://www.thebooktrail.com/authorsonlocation/the-making-of-a-poem-in-australia

And if you want to know more to what is being said in the UK about Rosanna’s new book, poet and literary critic Nigel Kent has recently published an excellent review in which he discusses both The Making of a Poem and Rosanna’s earlier book featuring UK poets, The Process of Poetry
https://nigelkentpoet.wordpress.com/2025/05/31/review-of-the-making-of-a-poem-edited-by-rosanna-mcglone

Rosanna McGlone
Mark Tredinnick Poet
Rochford Press/Rochford Street Review


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