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Five Islands Press was established in 1986 and is dedicated to the publication of fine Australian poetry. A new chapter in the history of FIP is now underway with a publishing team composed of: Kevin Brophy, Dan Disney, Lyn Hatherly, Lucy Holt and Ella Holcombe.

The most recent publications are:

Judy Johnson Navigation

Barry Hill As we draw ourselves

Sandy Fitts View from the Lucky Hotel

Louise Oxley Buoyancy will be launched on August 20 during Tasmanian Living Writers' Week. Please join us at the Hobart Bookshop (22 Salamanca Square, Hobart) at 5.30pm. If you would like to attend Louise's Sydney launch on September 6, then please join us at the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts, 280 Pitt St., Sydney at 1.50pm.

Books planned for 2008/09 include the poetry of Ian McBryde, Anna Kerdijk Nicholson, Susan Hampton, and Tatjana Lukic.

You can buy our books either through the PayPal facility that appears on the New Books page OR by downloading the Order Form and posting it to us. For larger orders, please contact us for a quote on postal costs.

If you'd like to be placed on the Five Islands Press email list to be advised of the publication of new titles, please email: contact@fiveislandspress.com

Buoyancy - Louise Oxley Coastlines are the source of Louise Oxley’s poetry. These poems are also expressions of love, loss and personal experiences. Of ‘Blaendigeddi’ Philip Salom wrote, ‘The language is rich and lush and is filled with a wonderfully sustained energy ... It is many things at once — a trip, a time-out, a love poem, an intense affirmation of alertness to new experience and it is a celebration of beauty and place ... it is beautifully made and by being so it thereby also celebrates poetry.’

Of her first book: ‘The achievement of Louise Oxley’s Compound Eye is remarkable ... using pitch-perfect language, Oxley creates marvellous personal arcs in which natural history, science and autiobiography are transported specifically.’
Jennifer Harrison
‘The scope of these poems — the wide radar of their intelligence — is their appeal. They both embody and reflect upon consciousness, the integrity of the moment — historic, present, even prehistoric; it takes serious word-craft and acuity to achieve this. I’m drawn to the poems in this collection for their words, their ideas, and for their humanity.’
Sarah Day

To purchase Louise Oxley's book, Buoyancy, please go to the 'New Books' page.

View from the Lucky Hotel - Sandy Fitts

The poems in ‘View from the Lucky Hotel’ are fully alive to the world.
Many are located in Vietnam; yet while embedded in the specifics of locality, their issues resonate far beyond, alert to economics, politics, culture, history, aesthetics and ethics. In this first collection, Sandy Fitts establishes a signature style that includes lyric, satire, essay, and narrative forms. This is poetry with range and a keen eye.

Droll, zestful, tender, complicated, meditative - Sandy Fitts’ poems invite the reader into tout le monde. Peter Steele

‘This joyful cartography’ might well define what Sandy Fitts is about in these poems, whether they’re mapping experiences of Hanoi or central Australia. Resonant with a poetic voice that is ‘strong, /strong enough to celebrate this time and this place ...’ Jennifer Strauss

A wonderfully fresh, subtle and endearing voice.
Helen Garner
To purchase Sandy Fitts' book, View from the Lucky Hotel, please go to the 'New Books' page.

As we draw ourselves - Barry Hill

Barry Hill's new collection takes its title from 'Cliff,' one of his poems inspired by Fantastic Mountains, a celebrated exhibition of Chinese landscape painting:
how
as we draw ourselves
toward clouds
slopes wrap us
twist and knot
slow us like rocks

The 'drawing' pertains to moments in healing journeys on sacred mountains - from Taoist places in China to the snow white mountains at Carrara, from which Michelangelo drew his marble. The drawing also involves Hill's response to painters from Giotto to Bonnard, and to Michelangelo's way of drafting sonnets onto his sheets of sketches. Hill's work is an active circumscribing of how we are with ourselves and with each other in places as classically abroad as Italy as well as in our kitchen at home. As we draw ourselves reaches into art and into history, literary and personal, looping back to the homecomings and the loves that earth us.
'The whole series is very beautiful. A virtuoso poet seduces us. This is drawing as poetry, poetry as mark making --- intimate, transforming. I am deeply moved to find that there is so much Barry Hill can teach me about drawing.'                                  John Wolseley

To purchase Barry Hill's book, As we draw ourselves, please go to the 'New Books' page.

Navigation - Judy Johnson

In these poems the external world is used as a mirror for the internal, emotional landscape we all inhabit. By weaving together these inner and outer threads, thereby making new connections, Johnson redefines the familiar so that it becomes once again strange and convincing.
Navigation contains poems that are short, sharp pieces drawn from her abiding concerns with family, death, and love.
These contrast with longer poems in the book which are extended and meticulously researched historical narratives addressing issues of lasting ethical significance.
Judy’s historical verse novel Jack won the 2007 Victorian Premier’s CJ Dennis Poetry Prize.
Of her previous books:
‘This is a poetry both worldly and refined.’
                                  Judith Beveridge

'A powerful collection of poems, Johnson explores the complex interplay between the external world and the inexpressible, often intolerable inner world we carry with us.'
                             Peter Boyle

To purchase Judy Johnson's book, Navigation, please go to the 'New Books' page.

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