[POETRY] The Earlwood Journal (The Fire Season) / Book: 15-Line Sonnets / Three of Them / My Workshop of Filthy Creation

Melbourne : Life Before Man (Gazebo Books), December 2021. “Red-Letter Series”. Limited edition of 25 numbered and signed copies. Four volumes, uniform octavo (210 x 120 mm), each title in chapbook format with original woodcut wrappers by Phil Day, comprising 1. Laurie Duggan The Earlwood Journal (The Fire Season), 16 pp; 2. Jordie Albiston Book: 15-Line Sonnets, 20 pp; 3. Ken Bolton Three of Them, 24 pp; 4. Jill Jones My Workshop of Filthy Creation, 16 pp.

Life Before Man, the poetry imprint of Gazebo Books, has embarked on a new initiative in 2021. Its Red-Letter series consists of poetry chapbooks representing new work by major award-winning Australian poets. Each title is issued in a strictly limited edition of 25 numbered and signed copies. The chapbooks come with original woodcut wrappers, created especially for the series by Melbourne artist Phil Day.

Douglas Stewart Fine Books is honoured to be the sole distributor of the first four titles in the Red-Letter series, released in January 2022 and offered only as a complete set of four chapbooks. 

The poets:

Laurie Duggan was born in Melbourne and has been involved in the poetry worlds of that city, as well as Sydney and Brisbane. He has published more than twenty books of poetry, and been recipient of the Anne Elder Poetry Award, a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, the Age Poetry Book of the Year, and the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal. In 2006 he moved to the UK and lived in Faversham, Kent until 2018 when he returned to Australia. His most recent book Homer Street (Sydney, Giramondo, 2020), has been shortlisted for the 2021 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards.

Jordie Albiston has published fourteen poetry collections and a handbook on poetic form. Two of her books have been treated for music-theatre, both enjoying seasons at the Sydney Opera House. Albiston’s poetry has been recognised by prizes including the Mary Gilmore Award, the NSW Premier’s Prize, and the Patrick White Literary Award. She has been awarded Fellowships at State Library Victoria (2017) and the National Library of Australia (2021). Her latest collection, element: the atomic weight & radius of love, was shortlisted for the ASAL Gold medal and the NSW Premier’s Prize, and most recently she was shortlisted for the Melbourne Prize for Literature.

Ken Bolton worked for the Experimental Art Foundation in Adelaide and edited Little Esther books. A selection of his art criticism is collected in Art Writing (CACSA, Adelaide, 2009). He edited the magazines Magic Sam and Otis Rush, edited Homage to John Forbes and wrote the artist’s monograph Michelle Nikou. He has published numerous books of poetry, including The Circus (Wakefield Press, 2006), A Whistled Bit Of Bop (Vagabond Press, 2010). Shearsman Press (UK) published a new Selected Poems in 2013. Bolton’s more recent books include Threefer and Salute, published by Puncher & Wattmann, Starting at Basheer’s and London Journal from Vagabond; and Lonnie’s Lament from Wakefield Press—which has also published his collaborations with Peter Bakowski—Elsewhere Variations (2019) and Nearly Lunch (2021).

Jill Jones was born in Sydney and has lived in Adelaide since 2008. Recent books include Wild Curious Air, winner of the 2021 Wesley Michel Wright Prize, A History Of What I’ll Become, shortlisted for the 2021 Kenneth Slessor Award, and Viva the Real, shortlisted for the 2019 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry and the 2020 John Bray Award. In 2015 she won the Victorian Premier’s Prize for Poetry for The Beautiful Anxiety, and in 2003 the Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize for Screens, Jets, Heaven: New and Selected Poems. Her first book, The Mask and the Jagged Star, won the 1993 Mary Gilmore Award. Her work is widely published in Australia and internationally and has been translated into a number of languages, including Chinese, French, Italian, Czech, Macedonian and Spanish.