Poetry Collections We Can’t Wait to Read in 2021
It’s looking like a great year for poetry collections (but then, when is it ever not)! Poetry has a way of drawing our collective consciousness to society’s most pressing and urgent issues. The themes tackled in the following upcoming releases are testament to this.
Provocation, beauty, belonging and identity: these are some of the poetry books we can’t wait to read in the year ahead.
Dropbear by Evelyn Araluen
The debut collection from Goorie-Koori PhD poet Evelyn Araluen was released earlier in March and has already taken the literary world by storm. Exploring colonial and personal histories, Araluen demonstrates an impressive lyrical mastery, “deftly navigating the responsibilities that gather from a sovereign country, the spectres of memory and the debris of settler-coloniality” (UQP). Dropbear is an eloquent and powerful mix of poetry and essay imbued with redemption that needs to be experienced.
Release Date: March 2021
Publisher: University of Queensland Press
An Embroidery of Old Maps and New by Angela Costi
The fifth collection from Angela Costi, this weaving, expressive set of poems draws on Costi’s Cypriot heritage and life in Australia. Known as Aggeliki Kosti among the Cypriot-Greek diaspora, Costi’s latest collection focuses on migration, memory, and maternal love’s fierce power to leave familiar lands and carve maps somewhere new.
Release Date: March 2021
Publisher: Spinifex Press
A Thousand Crimson Blooms by Eileen Chong
Australian poet of Chinese descent, Eileen Chong, moved to Australia as an adult migrant from Singapore. She is the author of eight previous books published across Australia and the United States. Her latest poetry collection is a thoughtful meditation on the influences and histories that inform our identities and obsessions. Exploring personal, familial and cultural themes, Chong deepens “her commitment to a poetics of sensuous simplicity and complex emotions, even as she confronts the challenges of infertility or fraught mother-daughter relations” (UQP). A dazzling compilation, not to be missed.
Release Date: March 2021
Publisher: University Queensland Press
The Gleaner Song: Selected Poems by Song Lin (Translated by Dong Li)
Chinese poet Song Lin has an impressive publishing record worldwide, and his poetry is heralded for its lyrical innovation. This new collection, compiled in collaboration with translator Dong Li, spans four decades of the poet’s incredible life and travels through France, Singapore, Argentina and return to China. Lin was imprisoned for a year for leading student demonstrations in Shanghai after the Tiananmen protest exploded in Beijing, 1989. His poetry sings from his experiences of displacement and exile.
Release Date: June 2021
Publisher: Giramondo
Vociferate 詠 by Emily Sun
Born in Hong Kong before moving to England at the age of three, Emily Sun and her family then immigrated to Western Australia when she was eight years old. Her work has been published widely across notable Australian journals, and this is her debut collection of poetry. Inspired by diasporic-Asian feminist writers, Sun tackles the complexities of transnational identities, resisting the oriental tropes pressured upon her and questions what it means to ‘belong’ for Asian-Australians in historical and contemporary Australian society.
Release Date: June 2021
Publisher: Fremantle Press
Poems That Do Not Sleep by Hassan Al Nawwab
A former Iraqi soldier, Hassan Al Nawwab, immigrated to Australia after the war with his family in 2003. While Nawwab has published three poetry collections previously, this is the first collection in English, which he translated from Arabic. Each poem is presented with the English translation and original Arabic. Eloquent and delivered with an unexpected simplicity, Nawwab’s poems speak to his experiences of the war and the terrors he experienced, homesickness, exile, peace and belonging.
Release Date: June 2021
Publisher: Fremantle Press
Obligations of Voice by Anne Elvey
Poet, editor and researcher, Anne Elvey has previously published three chapbook collections of poetry. This new body of work speaks loudly to her work within ecocriticism and ecofeminism. Intimate and expansive at the same time, Elvey explores environmental encounters and the politics of our natural (and unnatural) worlds. With impressive dexterity, she presents “the embodiment of the world and the nature of grace, through poetry sharply attuned to its subject matter” (Recent Work Press).
Release Date: June 2021
Publisher: Recent Work Press
Trigger Warning by Maria Takolander
Award-winning Melbourne-born poet Maria Takolander presents what’s been called her “most impressive and personal collection yet.” As the title may suggest, this collection (her fourth) is not for the faint of heart as she tackles domestic violence, complex personal histories, and environmental catastrophes with a clear and startling voice. Described as “balancing ruthlessness and lyrical beauty” (UQP), Takolander draws us sharply into her world with poetry purposefully and powerfully written for our current times.
Release Date: July 2021
Publisher: University Queensland Press
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And you can check out even more poetry collections we can’t wait to read in 2021 here!
Elaine Mead is a freelance writer and book reviewer, currently residing in Hobart, Tasmania. She is passionate about the ways we can use literature to learn from our experiences to become more authentic versions of ourselves and obsessed with showing you photos of her Dachshund puppy. You can find her online at www.wordswithelaine.com.
