Melbourne Poets Union

These three new poetry collections are works by established poets at the top of their game in terms of poetic craft and the honing of insights into both life and art. These are voices developed across a significant number of previous collections, allowing for an emergence of innovation, confidence, and ease of style and mood.

When I became editor-in-chief of Melbourne Poets Union Inc (MPU) in January 2019, there was an opportunity to take its publishing program in new and exciting directions. MPU, a Melbourne-based arts organisation whose raison d’être ever since its inception in 1977 has been poetry, had published anthologies and chapbooks. The Union Poets Series of chapbooks was a staple of its annual publishing program. It was an evolving situation as I rethought its chapbooks and other possibilities. Any change could not be cosmetic. As I completed work on MPU’s 2019 Union Poets Series, I envisaged other possibilities, more ambitious and ecumenical. The chapbooks needed a new, elegant look and to reflect the interests, preoccupations, and diversity of contemporary poets.