This is the first published review of the book, so all very exciting!

It is most interesting to hear the feedback and the different interpretations of the work…and thank you to all who have offered feedback, thoughts and criticism. To view the ABR review, click here: Kenneally In Brief

Bowra is so rich with local stories and landscapes – I really urge you to go and get your hands on a copy! If you are in Brisbane or surrounds, there will be a second chance to hear Bowra being launched – as Brett will be a feature poet at the May edition of Speedpoets at the Hideaway in the Valley.

And now some photos from the launch day! Many happy poetry lovers were lucky enough to get their hands on both books and as an added bonus picked up a free book as part of our launch day special. If any of my blog readers are still interested in a copy of Confessional Box, please contact me with your email and I can arrange this for you. There are still some copies remaining from the initial print run. Alternatively, visit the Walleah Press bookshop.

There is a third and final launch of Confessional Box coming up, thanks to an invitation extended by Brett Dionysius. Brett will be launching Bowra on ANZAC Day at Ipswich Grammar School and has invited me along to read from Confessional Box as the ‘support act’. There are many Ipswich-themed poems in the book so it is great to be able to do a reading at Ipswich.

Being the afternoon on a public holiday, it would be lovely to see local poetry lovers head west for the double launch event.

Date: 25 April 2013

Place: Great Hall, Ipswich Grammar School

Time: 2:30pm

Both books will be on sale on the day (for a special double offer)!

Please contact me if you can’t make the event, but would like a copy of the book.

I’ve also been asked to do another gig in July – and will have more information on this soon!

I’m pleased to be sharing feature billing with Nigel Ellis who will also be launching a book on the day – Haematograms which has been published by Neo-Poiesis Press. So along with the usual Open Mic rounds and the sounds of Moveable Feast, Speedpoeters will also be treated to a double book launch.

As part of the launch I’ll be performing a 15 minute feature and will be looking to give a few of the less-performed poems in the book a bit of a run. Books will be available for sale on the day and I’ll have plenty of the Maryanne Oliver-designed bookmarks to give away with each book as well. Can’t wait to again catch up with the Brisbane poetry crew for another great celebration of words!

If you can’t get along to the second launch but would still like to get your hands on a book – please send me a message and I’ll arrange to get one to you.

Here are the details for the launch:

Date: Saturday March 30

Time: Doors at 1:30pm Open Mic starts at 2pm

Venue: The Hideaway, 188 Brunswick Street, Fortitude Valley

Cost: Gold coin donation

More info here: http://speedpoets.com/

A replacement performance has been arranged for my slot today and the first SpeedPoets for the year looks set to be a cracker! Get along and support local Brisbane talent and remember to pack a poem in your pocket for the Open Mic!

A big thanks to Sarah and the QPF team, Riverbend and of course Walleah Press. Also to Brett Dionysius, John Koenig and Trudie Murrell who helped out with my launch and reading – I am very lucky to be part of the Brisbane poetry scene.

Now, for those who weren’t able to be there, here are some photos and a copy of Brett’s launch speech for you to enjoy:

Vanessa Page: ‘Confessional Box’ Walleah Press

Vanessa Page is a poet who has foregone 20 years of writing juvenilia to spring from the forehead of the Queensland poetry scene, as a fully-fledged post-Athena poet.

The two rich manuscripts that make up Confessional Box were both runner-up in the Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Prize in 2011 and 2012.  In April 2012, her first micro-collection, Feeding Paper Tigers was published by Graham Nunn’s Another Lost Shark Press as part of its Brisbane New Voices series, a prime example of the absolute fecundity of the contemporary Queensland poetry scene. A healthy poetry scene is a particle accelerator for smashing atoms of words together and discovering new dimensions of meaning.

The publication of Confessional Box was a direct result of this energised scene. A guest of last year’s Queensland Poetry Festival, Vanessa read to an appreciative crowd, one which contained publisher Ralph Wessman, who after hearing Vanessa’s work on stage asked to see a manuscript. This is how poetry publication should be. Not based on who you know, how many Facebook friends you have, or parochial poetry politics, but based on how your words connect people to the great lyric moments of existence.

In the first section of Confessional Box, “home fires” ‘certainly the ‘fire’ of the self is burning down. We see what was once the narrator’s bright flame of desire and self-assuredness waver, as the fuel of human connectedness is consumed and relationships start to flicker out and die. Vanessa situates her sensual poetry within the liminal spaces of the Australian suburbs, under ragged awnings and from the magic windows of public trains. The domestic and household imagery in these poems is at once engagingly familiar and enticingly rich and strange like a scene from a David Lynch film. Robert Adamson says that Page’s ‘images are chipped with such clean lines from reality; they seem slightly surreal.’ He is right.

The narrator enters poems like Cartography, A Domestic Metaphor, Fossils, Territory and the book’s title poem Confessional Box expecting some kind of road map that reassures her that there is strength in the familiar, in the domestic, in the ordinary, in relationships. But no, here is a kind of lyrical subtopia, where the harshness of the urban environment mocks her emotional entropy. In these poems, ‘driveway mouths spit mortar like broken teeth’, ‘a naked bulb burn[s] through kitchen lourve slits as something boils dry on the stove, ‘the bowser moans into the tank like something primal’ and ‘the broken awning outside his bedroom has become a form of water torture’. Suburbia and its domestic paraphernalia deteriorate, mirroring her loss of self, which careens through this section from a low state of entropy to a high state of emotional decay.

Then, in the second section, “bush fires”, the embers of the self, burnt down to charcoal in ‘home fires’ are fanned alive and stirred into flame again as she seeks refuge from suburbia and its dark emotional connections. It is the raw and anonymous Australian landscape, which offers her psychological shelter in its ‘big sky country’.

The narrator finds refuge in obscurity to repair herself, like a tomcat stalking under the house steps after a fight to meticulously lick its wounds clean. It is driving through small country towns, along remote highways and exploring new country sensibilities where she ‘grasp[s] at the sense in endings’ and grows a ‘new space to love’. Here, the pastoral is constructed as a place to heal the ‘self’, as suggested in Between Barcaldine and us, when she says, ‘I’m ghosting in a town of worker’s pubs/finding refuge in random characteristics’.

The final section of Confessional Box is entitled “embers”, and immediately the fires of hope and the self’s resurrection have been reignited in the narrator’s world. The earlier effects of subtopia no longer cause her to feel out of control, as the new spark of love casts its steadying hand over the domestic scene as suggested in Five fifty-three am – ‘Your car slides along the Amberley road in confessional box/calm and twenty thoughts all fall away from you like dried earth/All the world breathes in and out/It’s this simple.’

Like a cicada that’s been buried for years beneath the ground, she emerges anew and glowing in this last section; the rich country landscape has done its work in healing the soul; the dried earth falls away like a cocoon; the new lovers have broken each other open and the narrator wears a new version of skin. Their wings dry in the morning sun.

In the poems of this section she engages with a rejuvenated natural world, one that once was indifferent in ‘home fires’, but now is seen through the lens of new love as a kind of mutual spectator as promoted in The back step – ‘I come home and you’re peeling a mandarin on my back step/working the rind with sandpaper hands/as mangoes blush along the fence like tree bling’.

Ultimately, this is a book about endings and beginnings, about loss and return, about despair and hope, about a transition of the self from fragility to solidity. Even the trust of subtopia, the urban nemesis that hounded her in ‘home fires’ is rekindled and won, transformed from its interruptive past into a familiar and comforting space as witnessed in the poem, Limestone Park.

all around, endings and beginnings are being marked

out in tail light parentheses and keyless exits

as darkness falls, thick and familiar

over a thousand tin-lidded anthologies

As Bob Adamson states, Vanessa has indeed created a world both intimate and universal; a mean feat for a first collection of sensual and beautiful poetry. Vanessa’s book is a fine addition to the contemporary Australian lyric and it is my great pleasure to announce Confessional Box duly launched. Would you please put your hands together and help me congratulate Vanessa on her wonderful new poetry collection.

A second launch will be happening at SpeedPoets on Saturday 23 February at the Hideaway in Fortitude Valley. Looking forward to catching up with the Brisbane poetry fraternity at these two events.

The folks at Queensland Poetry Festival has also recently published an interview with me about the release of the book. You can read that at the QPF website. There is also an interview on the SpeedPoets website. It is wonderful to have so much support for the release of this book and I have really appreciated everyone’s generosity!

Finally it was lovely this week that a copy of the book found its way into the hands of my high school English teacher and the library of my old school. Here’s a photo of my friend (and cover art illustrator) Maryanne Oliver delivering the book to St Joseph’s College, Toowoomba.

Here’s a sneak preview of the cover art…

The original key artwork was created by Maryanne Oliver and the graphic design work was created by Jessica Fazakarley (Mondo hue designs).

Confessional Box – cover art

Running to approximately 80 pages, the book features the best of my two shortlisted Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize manuscripts and is being published by Tasmania’s Walleah Press.

There will be two launch events taking place in February, and here are the details for each:

QPF Poetry Series I at Riverbend Books

Date: Tuesday, 19 February 2013

Where: Riverbend Books, Oxford Street Bulimba

Time: 6pm for 6:30pm

Cost: $10 (bookings essential)

The wonderful Brett Dionysius is launching the book at this event, and I will be performing a selection from the book alongside some other very fine poets. You can find out more about the line-up and ticketing by visiting the Riverbend Books website.

Speedpoets

Date: Saturday 23 February 2013

Where: The Hideaway, Fortitude Valley

Time: From 2pm

Cost: Gold coin donation

The book will be launched by Graham Nunn at this event, copies will be for sale and I will be performing a selection of poems alongside the traditional Speedpoets features and open mic poets.

How to buy and order

Books will be for sale at both of the launch events – but if you can’t make it along, they are also available to order direct from Walleah Press. Cost is $16 each or $18.50, including postage.

Anyone who has a Walleah Press publication in their collection will know that these are lovely quality books. Making this book even more special is the cover design, which features some original Maryanne Oliver artwork, combined with the graphic design magic of Jessica Fazakarley.

To celebrate the launch, all books will come with a limited edition Maryanne Oliver bookmark. Maryanne created the ‘key’ artwork for the book’s cover and is a well known Brisbane illustrator and artist who has exhibited her beautiful work internationally and domestically. Bookmarks will also be signed by the poet and artist.

Please contact me if you would like further information about any of the above details.

A final word…

Putting together a book like this is a big effort and there are many people who have assisted throughout the process. I thank you all for your belief, encouragement and support. To the readers, I hope you enjoy reading these poems as much as I have enjoyed writing them. It is a wonderful feeling to release such a large collection of poems into the world!

Firstly, Robyn Evans who blogs at the Siren of Brixton who talks about the process of writing her novel –  a supernatural thriller. Robyn is a Brixton, London based short story, screenplay and fiction writer. Robyn’s talent and determination to keep pushing herself within these very challenging art forms is very inspirational to me.

Secondly, the Tasmanian poet and prose writer Cameron Hindrum, who I met at last year’s Queensland Poetry Festival has stepped up to the plate to talk about his poetry projects. Cameron expands on the processes behind his wonderful chapbooks Private Conversations (Vol 1 and 2).

Keep watching this space for more responses from some other wonderfully talented writers!