The Rainbow-birds and Other Poems

In this volume, father and son manage to hang rainbows, like magic charms, over everyday sights, sounds and patterns found in the Australian landscape. Within this collection are poems which capture personal memories and some which paint pictures of past landscapes and ancient traditions. The themes of Time and Nature soar and sing throughout this anthology. The Rainbow-birds offers a new generation of Australians wings to soar and the freedom to imagine and appreciate the unique offerings of this colourful, ancient land

The Dog with the Golden Paws

A stray dog finds a family who takes it in and it becomes the family pet. What follows is an exciting story of how this pet turns their lives around and what lengths they have to go to in order to keep it. Will the family succeed? The Dog with the Golden Paws is also about the love that exists between humans and dogs and the enrichment that a pet brings into people’s lives. Poet Peter Skrzynecki and his artist son Andrew have collaborated on a story set in Australia’s colonial history. It’s narrative and illustrations will appeal to children and adults alike

Old/new world: New & Selected Poems

Elegiac, meditative, and lyrical, these poems explore the lives of postwar immigrants in Australia and chronicle their struggle for identity and integration in a foreign society. Along with new work, this collection includes the poem "Immigrant Chronicle" and a generous selection of previously published poems

Jervis Bay

Bay of winds and sunrises

Ulysses in New England : a tribute to Judith Wright

It was while I worked at Kunghur that I bought a copy of Judith Wright’s Selected Poems, Five Senses. Now I could experience the full range of her lyrics, the imagery of her New England and Queensland nature poems as well as the intensity of experience behind them. And it was here, in ”For New England” that I read a line of poetry that jarred my nerves instantly: “Where’s home, Ulysses?” Three words, each sharp as a razor, had brought me around to confront myself and the dilemma that I sometimes faced when considering the question of my Polish/Ukrainian background

A Fiercer Light: A New Understanding of the Work of Judith Wright

A fiercer light honours the life and work of one of Australia’s greatest poets, Judith Wright, who was also an Aboriginal land rights activist and environmentalist. This tribute collection of essays provides a new understanding of her life’s work without becoming an academic treatise. Contributors include Patricia Clarke, Oodgeroo, Lorne Johnson, Fiona Capp, Alan Gould, Margaret Bradstock, Kathryn Burns, Louise Wakeling and Peter Skrzynecki. Judith Wright’s essay, “Moongalba” is reprinted. Spanning a writing career of 50 years Judith Wright remains one of this country’s foremost creative writers and social activists of the 20th century

Nursery rhymes and falling stars

The year 2009 will mark the sixtieth armiversary of my Polish/Ukrainian family's migration to Australia. It will also be the year in'which my poetry migrates back to Poland to be translated from English into Polish. Strange circles are being completed in 2009. We arrived in Sydney on 11 November 1949 on board the GeneralRM Blatcliford as part of a government program to bring workers to this country. I was four years old. The back of my passport photograph in 1949, as well as those of my parents, carried the inscription 'Worker for Australia'. A strange classification for a four-year-old boy, one who would go on to spend the rest of his life handling words and knowledge for a living, never a pick or shovel

Book Club: The Aunt's Story by Patrick White - Radio National Books and Arts Daily program panel discussion

A panel discussion of The Aunt's Story by Patrick White on ABC Radio National's Books and Arts Daily program presented by Michael Cathcart. The panel includes Peter Skrzynecki, Helen Morse, and Adam Cook

Immigrant Chronicle, four decades on

It was the early 1970s and a mainstream publisher had rejected a poetry manuscript that I sent to them; about the same time University of Queensland Press was starting its second Paperback Poets series (the coloured covers) and I submitted the collection to them. To my delight, it was accepted. Roger McDonald was publisher and Tom Shapcott was poetry editor. The original title was dropped. Roger and Tom did the final selection. Roger and I came up with the title. He said the word ‘immigrant’ should be in the title. Having studied and enjoyed King Alfred’s Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, I have always liked the classic reverberations of the word ‘chronicle’ and suggested we use it. I flew up to Brisbane for a meeting and it all came together naturally, without any angst. Since 1975 Immigrant Chronicle has never been out of print and, to date, has gone into twenty-four reprints

Appointment Northwest

Appointment Northwest is the autobiography/memoir of a young teacher appointed to a one-teacher school at Jeogla on the New England Tablelands in the 1960s: an appointment that leads to the discovery of people, places and poetry. Jeogla, like Walden for Henry David Thoreau, becomes a sanctuary, a retreat for the observation of the natural world, the high country with its mountains, rivers, waterfalls and wildlife; it stirs the awakenings of self-reliance. Included in the narrative is the story of a family’s tragedy and a broken promise – the consequences of which reverberate for many years until they are resolved by the healing process of Time. Or are they