A nice surprise last night: within a few minutes of each other, emails from poets Adam Aitken and Chris Wallace-Crabbe arrived in my inbox. Adam is currently based in Cambodia—he’ll be back in Sydney later this year. So it was one poet-in-exile addressing another. And I was delighted to hear that he’ll have another book coming out soon with Giramondo. I came across his work when I was drawn to the cover of Romeo and Juliet in Subtitles, and, after taking it home, there was one poem that drew me into the book. Something to look out for—I guess I’ll be sending another wishlist home later this year, for books I can’t get here.

Then, Chris. Chris was one of my earliest mentors as a poet, and again I’m pleased to here that another book is forthcoming. A recent notification from ABR informed me that another selection from his diary was published in a recent issue—it made me wish that I could afford to be an international subscriber. If my book does end up working out, it will be in no small part because of his encouragement and assistance over the years. He must be one of the most generous poets in Australia, always willing to look over work and tell me when it’s “flat as a pancake.” (True—among the first ten or so poems I ever showed him, he liked a number of them; but one came back with this comment. I’ve valued his opinion ever since. I was especially proud when he told me I’d recent a quite-good terza rima.)

To top that off, Ella Holcombe sent me her first book, which appeared in last year’s New Poets series from Five Islands Press. I’m currently interviewing Ella, and am looking forward to reading the book, some other poems she sent with it, and writing about it here. It’s always lovely when a parcel arrives! On a purely superficial note, I’m so glad to see that Five Islands have shifted the series into a format that includes perfect binding and much better design. So often in the past, exciting new voices were buried in badly designed, stapled booklets.

Which has made it an even more poetry-filled week. Refreshing and exhausting—I wouldn’t have it any other way.