It’s been a big couple of days for Eddie Paterson and redactor, published by Whitmore Press in February 2017.

Yesterday, after a reading of ‘redactor’, Eddie was named by Marieke Hardy in The Guardian as one of eight new writers we should be reading. Hardy writes, ‘when a writer such as Eddie Paterson falls across one’s radar the thrilling potential can’t be ignored. His latest collection, redactor, uses found texts from ordinary daily life to make word-magic on the page’. https://www.theguardian.com/…/eight-new-australian-writers-…

Today, ‘redactor’ has been shortlisted, along with works by Bella Li and Jennifer Maiden, in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. The judges describe redactor as a ‘hilarious, politically alive vivid experiment. It’s a hand-held guide to finding the twisted wonderful poetry in every banal word we employ. https://www.wheelercentre.com/…/victorian-premier-s-literar…

Like a copy of redactor? Order here, and we’ll send it to straight to your door (free postage, do yourself a favour etc.).

Whitmore Press is delighted to announce the launch of November Journal, the latest collection by Diane Fahey.

The details:

Collected Works bookshop
First Floor, Nicholas Building, 37 Swanston Street, Melbourne
Thursday 30 November, 6pm for 6.30 start

Launch by the poet Anne M Carson.

Drinks and snacks provided. All welcome!

In November Journal, Diane Fahey creates a record of her sojourn at Bundanon artists’ retreat with its view of fields, forest, plains, escarpments, and the Shoalhaven River. These one hundred poems in the tanka form are buoyant and contemplative, deftly unfolding a narrative while evoking the close-up particulars and encompassing dramas of the natural world.

If you’re in or near Melbourne, we hope you can take time out from the end-of-year rush to enjoy the intelligently quiet, reflective poems of one of Australia’s most renowned poets.

Can’t make the launch? Order November Journal online here, and we’ll mail a copy to your door – free postage.

Eddie Paterson’s redactor, published in February by Whitmore Press, was recently commended in the Wesley Michel Wright Poetry Prize, along with collections by Bella Li and Judy Johnson. The award was won by Susan Fealy. All up, works by four marvellous poets. redactor, along with Cassie Lewis’s ‘The Blue Decodes’ (Grand Parade Poets), is also warmly reviewed by Joan Fleming in the latest issue of Australian Book Review.

And Meteorites by Carmen Leigh Keates is one of five collections to be shortlisted for the Judith Wright Calanthe Award, part of the Queensland Literary Awards 2017.

Congratulations to both Eddie and Carmen!

You can purchase copies of Eddie’s and Carmen’s books from the Whitmore Press titles page.

Whitmore Press poets Carmen Leigh Keates and Andy Jackson are guests at the Queensland Poetry Festival, currently being held at the Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts, Fortitude Valley.

Along with a host of stellar Australian and international poets, Carmen and Andy feature in the multitude of readings, discussion panels, book launches and workshops on offer at the festival. Other guests include Ali Cobby Eckermann, Stuart Barnes, Bronwyn Lea, Eileen Chong, Kit Kelen, Bella Li and David Musgrave, among many other talented poets.

Full guest list and program are available on the Queensland Poetry Festival website.

Many congrats to Jill Jones for making the shortlist for the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry, part of the 2017 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, for Breaking the Days (Whitmore Press).

Jill’s 2015 collection sits alongside those by other distinguished poets whose works have also been shortlisted: Peter Boyle, Paul Hetherington, Antigone Kefala, John Kinsella and Ellen van Neerven. More details at the State Library of New South Wales website.

The winner of the $30,000 prize will be announced at the State Library on
22 May.

Meanwhile you can order a copy of Jill’s book here.

Following the hugely successful launch of Eddie Paterson’s new collection at Melbourne’s Bella Union Bar on 1 February – thanks to Amy Brown for a brilliant launch – copies of redactor are now available for ordering online. Click on the icon below, or go to the titles page and fill the trolley with Eddie’s and other poetry treasures.

redactor uses found texts from the everyday – emails, memos, notes, lyrics, text messages, tweets, webfeeds – as poetic material. Drawing on techniques from the visual arts and radical writing such as the ready-made, the cut-up and the concrete poem, Eddie Paterson reflects upon the ways in which the historical legacy of censorship intersects with contemporary surveillance technologies.

Recent Whitmore titles are also available at selected bookshops, including Collected Works, Melbourne; Paton Books, Geelong; Gleebooks, Sydney; and Avid Reader, Brisbane.

Happy reading!

Whitmore Press is thrilled to announce the launch of redactor by Melbourne poet Eddie Paterson. The details:

Bella Union Bar
Level 1, Trades Hall
54 Victoria Street (cnr Victoria and Lygon Streets; enter via Lygon)
Carlton South
Victoria
Wednesday 1 February
6pm for 6.30 start

Launch by poet and novelist Amy Brown.

All welcome!

redactor uses found texts from the everyday – emails, memos, notes, lyrics, text messages, tweets, webfeeds – as poetic material. Drawing on techniques from the visual arts and radical writing such as the ready-made, the cut-up and the concrete poem, Eddie Paterson reflects upon the ways in which the historical legacy of censorship intersects with contemporary surveillance technologies.

If you’re in or near Melbourne, we hope you can come along and help celebrate Eddie’s book – a timely one following the inauguration of a Twitter-obsessed US president.

Following a very successful launch in Melbourne in November, Meteorites by Carmen Leigh Keates is getting a home-town Brisbane launch. The when and where:

Avid Reader bookshop
193 Boundary Street
West End, Qld
Friday 20 January, 6pm

Come along and hear Carmen in a relaxed Q&A session with Melissa Ashley, author of the recently released fictional biography The Birdman’s Wife.

It’s a free event (wine included!), but so that Avid can keep track of numbers, please register your attendance at http://avidreader.com.au/events/carmen-leigh-keates-meteorites

The Whitmore Press Manuscript Prize has, for the present, been put on hold. We would have loved to continue with the prize for the seventh year straight, but other work commitments have left us little choice but to put the prize in abeyance. We hope to reignite it within a year or two. Thank you to all those who made enquiries regarding the prize for 2016.

Previous winners of the manuscript prize are Jamie King-Holden (2010), B.R. Dionysius and Jo Langdon (2011), Lucy Todd (2012), Andy Jackson (2013), Tracy Ryan and Jill Jones (2014), and Carmen Leigh Keates (2015).

The good news is that the press will continue to publish poetry, with the next scheduled publication being a collection based on Carmen’s winning 2015 entry, due to appear in November 2016.