The Other World

I am happy to announce that my ‘new and selected’ poems, The Other World is now available as a Kindle book or as paperback via Amazon.

As I mentioned here in a recent post, this has been a long process of re-reading and selecting from my three previously published collections and adding some new poems as well to the mix.

I was conscious that my three previous collections are long out of print and limited copies are only available directly from me, something that some readers aren’t always comfortable with. I wanted the poems to be accessible again. As much as I admire the extra layer of editing and professional quality control that a external publisher can bring (see Brook Emery’s recent Sea Scale) I wanted to have control of the project and didn’t want to get into a lengthy submission process, so I made the decision to publish this collection myself Any errors here are all mine!

The paperback edition is 90 pages and both the hard copy and ebook versions are available HERE from Amazon. It’s a nice feeling to have this selection out at last and I’m looking forward to hearing what readers think. I’m also looking forward to getting stuck into some new poetry projects over the rest of this year.

Planning for a Selected Poems

I’ve spent some time over the past few months planning a ‘selected poems’ based on poems from my three published collections and some new work. The idea is to collect together the ‘best’ poems from those original books and make them accessible in a new format. This will be something I’ll publish myself and make available in a Kindle edition and a paperback.

The process began with a look back at the original collections and choosing the poems from them that resonated most with me now. It’s a challenging thing to do at times, especially given that my first book was published thirty years ago, in 1992. They are different poems to what I’m writing now and I’ve resisted the impulse to re-do them as I work through them, and have left them in their original state.

Some of the work has involved actually typing up the poems from the hard cover book version; in some cases the poems have not been digitalised at all or were originally in some early computer format, perhaps on an Apple II, that has long since disappeared. The book will also include some ‘new’ work published since the third collection.

The cover will incorporate an image of Atlantis from an early edition of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne (edition unknown, if any Jules Verne fans could shed any light on what edition it was, I’d appreciate it). It’s an image I’ve had framed in my study for many years. I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of Atlantis and considered using the image for my first book Lost Things & Other Poems. In some ways, Atlantis is the original lost thing. It also connects nicely with the title I’ve been working on: The Other World: New and Selected Poems

I’m looking forward to finalising the project by the end of this month and will announce details here then.

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Sea Scale

It was nice to hear about the release of a new and selected volume from Australian poet Brook Emery, launched recently in Glebe, NSW, available now from the poetry section of the Puncher and Wattman site. When I had a look recently I was surprised and impressed with the range of Australian poetry they’re publishing currently.

With a particular focus on memory and the sea, this new book brings together new poems and selections from his five previous volumes; themes that particularly appeal to me.

I’ve been reading and enjoying Brook’s work for a long time now (proof here with my post about attending his 2012 launch of ‘Collusion’, way back in 2012!), so I’m looking forward to getting my hands on a copy of this significant release.

City of Stars

I was delighted today to attend the launch, and read a poem, from a new collection called City of Stars, an ‘anthology of love poems for Frankston’ edited by Avril Bradley.

The new collection is published by Gininderra Press and features poems from Garth Madsen (the unoffical poet laureate of Frankston), Jennifer Compton, Ann Simic, Glenn Harper and others.

I was fortunate enough to have three poems included in the collection: Beginnings, The Day it Snowed in Frankston and The Wedding Train, about the train journey on the Frankston line, loosely inspired by Philip Larkin.

I read the one about the day it might have actually snowed in Frankston, inspired by a story a student named Eloise told me a long time ago.

It was good to hear some of the poems being read aloud, and to get together to celebrate a place that seems an unlikely catalyst for poetry at times. In praise of place.

You might be able to get a copy of City of Stars from local bookshops like Robinsons.

Below from left: Avril Bradley (editor) launches the collection, Jennifer Compton, Garth Madsen.

Poems about Frankston

Frankston can get some bad press at times. Like many regional centres, especially at the end of the railway line, it has its share of problems: youth unemployment, drugs, crime and all that comes out of that.

But there’s another side of Frankston too; it was once a sleepy seaside holiday town, with a long, sandy beach and a meandering creek wandering by the shoreline. You can even read a passionate defence by the Mayor of Frankston HERE

I grew up in Frankston and though I haven’t written about it a lot, just a few poems now and then, it’s part of who I am. In my writing, my interests have moved further south, to Port Phillip Bay and Western Port Bay particularly.

But I was delighted to be asked to contribute to a forthcoming anthology of poems about Frankston and I can’t wait to see how other writers have responded to this place. I think I’ll have a couple of poems in the collection including, The Day it Snowed in Frankston. More details when I know more about a launch date.

Evan Jones – Selected Poems

A ‘selected’ poems is always an achievement. A ‘collected’ probably more so. So, nice to see news about a forthcoming ‘Selected Poems’ from Evan Jones, to be launched at Readings in a couple of weeks. I’ll be there!

Evan Jones launch