Exploring the nuances of modern consumerism, this poetry collection delves into the poet's experiences on the shop floor, highlighting frustrations with supermarket culture and reflections on advertising. It also evokes nostalgia for the corner shop era. Through the lens of consumption, the work addresses significant global issues like the baby trade, female genital mutilation, and the roles of women in conflict and activism, offering a thought-provoking commentary on society.
This anthology features a diverse collection of fiction, poetry, and autobiography from award-winning women writers connected to Ireland. The contributors, hailing from various countries, explore themes of history, myth, and the complexities of contemporary life, including peace and exile. The voices within are vibrant and daring, evoking strong imagery and emotions as they navigate personal and collective narratives. Notable writers include Maeve Binchy and Ailbhe Smyth, among others, offering a rich tapestry of experiences and perspectives.
Exploring themes of absence and place, this poetry collection presents vivid imagery of seasons and landscapes, with winter depicted as a lumbering figure and spring as a baking back. The poems feature a diverse cast of characters, from women in precise skirts to men with shipwrecked backs. Murphy's reflections intertwine the ordinary and the extraordinary, addressing concepts like water ancients and unexpected angels. Set against the backdrop of rural NSW, her work captures the nuances of language and emotion in everyday life.
The sun is our closest star just average a middle-aged dwarf past its prime but still a few billion years to go and fierce is its heat It's domains: interior surface atmospheres inner corona outer corona Did someone say Corona? The Wear of My Face is an assemblage of passing lives and landscapes, fractured worlds and realities. There is splintered text and image, memory and dream, newscast and conversation. Women wicker first light, old men make things that glow, poets are standing stones, frontlines merge with tourist lines. Lizz Murphy weaves these elements into the strangeness of suburbia, the intensity of waiting rooms, bush stillness, and hopes for a leap of faith as at times she leaves a poem as fragmented as a hectic day or a bombed street. What may sometimes seem like misdemeanours of the mind, to Lizz they are simply the distractions and disturbances of daily life somewhere. There is a rehomed greyhound, a breezy scientist, ancient malleefowl, beige union reps and people in all their conundrums. You might travel on a seagull's wing or wing through the aerosphere.
