My poem “Terminal 1: Aer Lingus” has been selected to appear in the just-published Best of Australian Poems 2024 (Puncher and Wattmann/Australian Poetry), edited by Kate Lilley and Shastra Deo.
This is third “best-of” in which my work has appeared, after the Best Australian Poetry 2003 (UQP) and Best Australian Poems 2011 (Black Inc.). Sure, this proliferation of anthologies potentially makes the “best” tag slightly less meaningful. But I’ll take any confidence bump I can find! And at least I can now say, somewhat convincingly, that my work has been anthologised over three decades!
(Actually one of my biggest regrets is not having had the energy to go through with Simply the Best as an anthology title while I was managing editor of Cordite Poetry Review. But perhaps there’s still time to use it in another context. LOL.)
Anyway, back to Best of Australian Poems 2024. As the Australian Poetry website describes it:
Best of Australian Poems is an annual anthology collecting previously published and unpublished poems to create a poetic snapshot and barometer of the year that was.
…
The book opens with an introduction by its 2024 editors, multiple award-winning and highly respected poets and editors, Kate Lilley and Shastra Deo. Kate is one of the longest-standing poets of repute and respect in the country, with work considered ground-breaking and innovating over decades. Shastra’s own major prizes include the prestigious, national Australian Literature Society Gold Medal and their poetry is also continually experimental and fearless.
I’m really pleased to have a poem included in this particular anthology, not least because I am a huge fan of Kate Lilley’s work (and had the privilege of attending her seminars on modernist American poetry while an undergraduate at the University of Sydney) but also because “Terminal 1: Aer Lingus” is one of the first poems I’ve written in, like, a very long time.
Furthermore, the poem itself holds special significance for me because of its form and subject matter. In fact, I’ve written a long post describing the poem’s genesis and content over on my Substack newsletter.
Here’s a snippet:
To say that I was thrilled with this turn of events would be an understatement. Not only would it be the first new poem of mine to be published in over 10 years; it was also a poem whose subject matter and inspiration are very close to my heart. Because “Terminal 1: Aer Lingus” is both a poem about an actual Aer Lingus flight, and an homage to an earlier, much better poem by John Tranter, entitled “Lufthansa“.
Best of Australian Poems 2024 has been released in print, with a free copy sent to each contributor (and contributor payments, too!). I’m looking forward to receiving my copy in the mail in the near future–and to reading the poems, of course!
In the meantime, it doesn’t appear as if Australian Poetry (or the anthology’s publishers, Puncher and Wattmann, who released my book Leaves of Glass in 2013) will be making the book available for sale. Which is a bit of a shame but perhaps a reflection of the limited market for this kind of publication.
In that context, I’m seriously considering making my poem available here, for posterity’s sake. But I’ll need to have a think about the wisdom of that first …
Anyway, here’s “Wonderwall”–I mean, a full list of poems of mine that have appeared in anthologies over the years decades.
