Red Room Poetry is Australia's leading organisation for creating, publishing and promoting poetry that reflects the diversity of Australian voices.
Call us what we carry : poems by
In Call Us What We Carry, Gorman explores history, language, identity, and erasure through an imaginative and intimate collage. Harnessing the collective grief of a global pandemic, these poems shine a light on a moment of reckoning and reveal that Gorman has become our messenger from the past, our voice for the future.
Every Day We Get More Illegal by
Voted a Best Poetry Book of the Year by Library Journal Included in Publishers Weekly's Top 10 Poetry Books of the Year One of LitHub's most Anticipated Books of the Year! A State of the Union from the nation's first Latino Poet Laureate. Trenchant, compassionate, and filled with hope. "Many poets since the 1960s have dreamed of a new hybrid art, part oral, part written, part English, part something else: an art grounded in ethnic identity, fueled by collective pride, yet irreducibly individual too. Many poets have tried to create such an art: Herrera is one of the first to succeed."--New York Times "Herrera has the unusual capacity to write convincing political poems that are as personally felt as poems can be."--NPR "Juan Felipe Herrera's magnificent new poems in Every Day We Get More Illegal testify to the deepest parts of the American dream--the streets and parking lots, the stores and restaurants and futures that belong to all--from the times when hope was bright, more like an intimate song than any anthem stirring the blood."--Naomi Shihab Nye, The New York Times Magazine "From Basho to Mandela, Every Day We Get More Illegal takes us on an international tour for a lesson in the history of resistance from a poet who declares, 'I had to learn . . . to take care of myself . . . the courage to listen to my self.' You hold in your hands evidence of who we really are."--Jericho Brown, author of The Tradition "These poems talk directly to America, to migrant people, and to working people. Herrera has created a chorus to remind us we are alive and beautiful and powerful."--José Olivarez, Author of Citizen Illegal "The poet comes to his country with a book of songs, and asks: America, are you listening? We better listen. There is wisdom in this book, there is a choral voice that teaches us 'to gain, pebble by pebble, seashell by seashell, the courage.' The courage to find more grace, to find flames."--Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic In this collection of poems, written during and immediately after two years on the road as United States Poet Laureate, Juan Felipe Herrera reports back on his travels through contemporary America. Poems written in the heat of witness, and later, in quiet moments of reflection, coalesce into an urgent, trenchant, and yet hope-filled portrait. The struggle and pain of those pushed to the edges, the shootings and assaults and injustices of our streets, the lethal border game that separates and divides, and then: a shift of register, a leap for peace and a view onto the possibility of unity. Every Day We Get More Illegal is a jolt to the conscience--filled with the multiple powers of the many voices and many textures of every day in America. "Former Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera should also be Laureate of our Millennium--a messenger who nimbly traverses the transcendental liminalities of the United States . . ."--Carmen Gimenez Smith, author of Be Recorder
Footprints in Wet Cement by
Fiction. These FOOTPRINTS IN WET CEMENT are just that: stories--some experienced, some homespun, some dredged from the fertile detritus of dreams; impressions gathered and ruminations fermented over the past decade or so--the fleeting imprint of a life left to harden in the ephemeral mold of language. Straddling the tenuous borderline between the narrative and the poetic, they are all the product of a pressed aesthetic. "In these delicious short (often very short) stories, Peter Wortsman crosses Kafkaesque absurdity with Chekhovian realism, fairy-tale and fable with everyday journal entry. A master of the telling detail, Wortsman is one of those rare writers upon whom nothing, as Henry James put it, is ever lost. The slightest incident can be seen to contain magic, an absurd TV commercial can prompt the most erotic of fantasies: it's all in a day's (or rather a night's) work and usually momentary. FOOTPRINTS IN WET CEMENT is a book to be kept on the bedside table: open anywhere at any time and you will be completely captivated."--Marjorie Perloff
Guwayu - for all times : a collection of first nations poems by
Summary: Guwayu - For All Times is a collection of First Nations poems commissioned by Red Room Poetry over the past 16 years. This collection features 61 poems from First Nations poets in 12 First Nations languages. Journey through a range of poetic forms from lyric, confessional, protest, narrative and song, showcasing new voices and established poets. (Publishers' website).
Human Looking by
The poems in Human Looking speak with the voices of the disabled and the disfigured, in ways which are confronting, but also illuminating and tender. They speak of surgical interventions, and of the different kinds of disability which they seek to 'correct'. They range widely, finding figures to identify with in mythology and history, art and photography, poetry and fiction. A number of poems deal with unsettling extremes of embodiment, and with violence against disabled people. Others emerge out of everyday life, and the effects of illness, pain and prejudice. The strength of the speaking voice is remarkable, as is its capacity for empathy and love. 'I, this wonderful catastrophe', the poet has Mary Shelley's monstrous figure declare. The use of unusual and disjunctive - or 'deformed' - poetic forms, adds to the emotional impact of the poems.
Kindred by
This is the breaking, the shattering, the smattering of every limit ever accepted or imposed... Kindred, Kirli Saunders debut poetry collection, is a pleasure to lose yourself in. Kirli has a keen eye for observation, humour and big themes that surround Love/Connection/Loss in an engaging style, complemented by evocative and poignant imagery. It talks to identity, culture, community and the role of Earth as healer. Kindred has the ability to grab hold of the personal in the universal and reflect this back to the reader.
Letter to My Daughter by
Summary: Dedicated to the daughter she never had but sees all around her, Letter to My Daughter reveals Maya Angelou's path to living well and living a life with meaning. Told in her own inimitable style, this book transcends genres and categories: guidebook, memoir, poetry, and pure delight.Here in short spellbinding essays are glimpses of the tumultuous life that led Angelou to an exalted place in American letters and taught her lessons in compassion and fortitude. (Distributor).
Millefiori by
A collection of love poems and fierce raps, Millefiori is Omar Musa's third book of poetry. Both dream-like and gritty, it also includes gorgeous illustrations and draft poems from Musa's notebook. Heartbreak, cocaine, colonial violence, memory and cave paintings- this is a world full of unbearable beauty and brutality. We know the world is a horror story, but it's also got love notes in the margins.
The Road Not Taken and Other Poems by
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. "These deceptively simple lines from the title poem of this collection suggest Robert Frost at his most representative: the language is simple, clear and colloquial, yet dense with meaning and wider significance. Drawing upon everyday incidents, common situations and rural imagery, Frost fashioned poetry of great lyrical beauty and potent symbolism. Now a selection of the best of his early works is available in this volume, originally published in 1916 under the title Mountain Interval. Included are many moving and expressive poems: "An Old Man's Winter Night," "In the Home Stretch," "Meeting and Passing," "Putting In the Seed," "A Time to Talk," "The Hill Wife," "The Exposed Nest," "The Sound of Trees" and more. All are reprinted here complete and unabridged. Includes "The Road Not Taken."
Spotlight by
Summary: Words have the power to empower others. In his own words, slam poet and social advocate, Solli Raphael shines a spotlight on the concerns teenagers face today, exploring the powerful link between writing and shaping the future. Following on from the success of Limelight, this new collection of poetry illuminates the social interests of Solli's generation in a thought-provoking style, including a mix of traditional poems and brand-new performance poems. It covers topics from connection to bullying and pinpoints climate change as a key concern with poems like Solli's Greenpeace collaboration piece 'Let's Make More Minutes Count!'.
Selected Poems by
For over forty years, until his death in 1967, Langston Hughes captured in his poetry the lives of black people in the USA. This edition is Hughes's own selection of his work, and includes all of his best known poems. A key figure in the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes is now seen as one of the great chroniclers of black American experience - and one of the great artists of the twentieth century. (Publisher).
Langston Hughes was a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance, the flowering of black intellectual, literary, and artistic life that took place in the 1920s in a number of American cities, particularly Harlem. A major poet, Hughes also wrote novels, short stories, essays, and plays.
Kevin John Gilbert (1933–1993) was a First Nations human rights defender, poet, playwright, and artist. Gilbert’s iconic play, The Cherry Pickers (1968), was the first play written by an Aboriginal person. He stipulated it could only be performed by an all-Aboriginal cast.
Louise Bennett was a Jamaican poet, activist and social commentator.
Kirli Saunders is a proud Gunai woman with ties to the Yuin, Gundungurra, Gadigal and Biripi people. Kirli is the Manager of Poetic Learning and Aboriginal Cultural Liaison at Red Room Poetry and founder of the Poetry in First Languages project.
Solli Raphael is a globally renowned poet and keynote speaker who rose to fame, at 12 years of age, after his winning performance at Australian Poetry Slam was viewed online over 4 million times in 24 hours.
Omar Musa is a Bornean-Australian author, visual artist and poet. Here Come the Dogs was long-listed for the Miles Franklin Award.
Amanda Gorman is an American poet and activist known for works that address Black identity, feminism, marginalisation and climate change.
John Hollander was an American poet and literary critic.
Abdullah Shoaib is a lesser-known poet of Asian origin. His name came to the forefront when he shook the internet with his reverse poem “Pretty Ugly” in the year 2018. It went viral, and nowadays, the text is read in the academic curriculum and appreciated by poetry lovers worldwide.
Juan Felipe Herrera is an American poet, performer, writer, cartoonist, teacher, and activist.
Michael Dransfield was an Australian poet active in the 1960s and early 1970s who wrote close to 1000 poems. His poems address people marginalised by society.
David Tredinnick reads the poems of Michael Dransfield.
Maya Angelou was an American memoirist, poet and civil rights activist.
Robert Frost was an American poet who was much admired for his realistic verse portraying ordinary people in everyday situations.
Peter Wortsman is dubbed a "20th-century Brother Grimm" (Bloomsbury Review) and "a delinquent Hans Christian Andersen" (by playwright Mark O'Donnell), Peter Wortsman is the author of works of fiction and nonfiction, stage plays and poetry. He is also a translator from the German and a travel writer.
Andy Jackson is a poet preoccupied with difference, embodiment and solidarity. He has featured at literary events and arts festivals across Australia, in Ireland, India and the USA.
Nola Gregory is a descendant of the Gija/Bardi peoples of the East and West Kimberly and has been writing poetry since 1995. Nola is the only Aboriginal person to have had a poem read in both the Federal and Western Australian State Parliaments.
Midnight Oil are an influential alternative rock band formed in Sydney, Australia in 1976. The band is best known for their political activism and environmentalism and their 1987 worldwide hit single "Beds Are Burning".
Abel Meeropol was an American writer, teacher and song-writer, whose works were published under his pseudonym Lewis Allan. His best-known song is Strange Fruit (1937), especially as recorded by Billie Holiday.