my throat feels tightthe back of my headseems nasal(cough) . . .~2020 arrived like a gut punch.Australia burned all through that summer, and before the smoke had cleared a new disaster swept in — Covid 19. Masks became part of daily life, borders were closed, and Victoria entered the first of seven lockdowns. Movement, work, and connection with other people were suddenly uncertain.Frank Prem had already been journalling the wildfires. ...

there is a me shaped spaceright here where I standthere was nothing beforethere will be nothing when I leaveFrench philosopher Gaston Bachelard explored the philosophic and poetic values of space in his masterwork, The Poetics of Space.In A Choir of Whispers Frank Prem interprets Bachelard's explorations of the poetic quasi-element space, decanting the vivid imagery contained in the philosopher's work into new and accessible free verse poetic storytel...

All day long I have been workingNow I am tired.I call: "Where are you?"But there is only the oak tree rustling in the wind . . .from Madonna of the Evening FlowersDrawing on the phrasing of the early 20th Century Amy Lowell poem Madonna of the Evening Flowers (above) Frank Prem has produced a collection of personal and interpersonal love poems written, as always, in the unique style that allows every reader to relate.Prem's interpretations breath...

. . . and at home we sayif it's yellowlet it mellowif it's brownflush it on down . . .~Two natural disasters, each on a massive scale, a decade and a half apart.One is the slow withering that desiccates the soul by increments, the other a raging series of fires burning half a continent in a mad rush of smoke and flame and wind.Two un-natural disasters, aided and abetted by the relentless destruction of the land we live in and ...

I don't knowwhat I knowfor sureI don't knowwhatI do not know~This poetry collection is the outcome of a week-long workshop retreat in 2024 - Cries From The Anthropocene - attended by creatives, academics, and researchers who came together in Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, to discuss, consider and respond to what they understood and what they might do in response to the parlous state...

PILGRIM is an illustrated collection of small wisdoms offered to illuminate the journey and to make sense, if possible, of the load that must be carried by all travellers.Seeking the balance between light and its many shades of opposition is an eternal quest.

swimdamn youbecomeof-the-sandyour appointed taskis to be huntedby meI demandyou swim~Ahab the mariner and Moby the white whale inhabit a desert ocean together. One of them is dying.Inspired by T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, Frank Prem takes readers on a spiritual voyage through uncharted oceans. A journey of the soul that can only end through transformation.~thisis the voice

From Volyn To Kherson, tells the stories of hardship and suffering and bewilderment experienced by the people of Ukraine in the early weeks of the 2022 Russian invasion and war.The collection draws on news reports and social media postings during the most un-curated war the world has ever witnessed, interpreting and translating the raw emotion of this wartime experience.There is no part of Ukraine that has been left untouched by this war, and no part of the poet left untouc...

Who is Ida Pender? Is she the elderly woman - Ida-Spider - rumoured to be resident in a 1970's Mental Asylum?Is she Squizzy Taylor's teenaged gangster moll of the roaring 1920's in Melbourne? The woman the police declared had shapely legs? She is Ida. The Jazz Baby.Frank Prem explores the story of Ida Pender, largely forgotten now, but once the notorious associate of a 1920s Melbourne gnagster. From the young girl sneaking out of her bedroom window to go dancing at the Pala...

The Garden Black poetry collection is a venture into fantasy and speculative fiction based on the dual themes of rain forest and fantasy.. The rainforest becomes a desert, and then the sea.. A man in a satellite orbits the earth while playing his violin and pondering. A girl gazes up at the passing light and dances.. Od Ovo - a youth who is from here, raises the dust of frustrated boredom on a mining asteroid, and cannot believe traveller tales of places where water...

Step into the heart of wildfire. Feel the heat, breathe the smoke.Devil In The Wind is an account of catastrophic fire and its immediate aftermath.In this 21st century, the whole world seems to be on fire. America burns. Europe burns. Greece is reeling after its own tragedy of fire.And Australia burns, as it has always done, but now so much more fiercely.In February 2009, wildfires burnt through entire communities, taking 173 lives and injuring hundreds, whi...

Step into the heart of wildfire. Feel the heat, breathe the smoke.Devil In The Wind is an account of catastrophic fire and its immediate aftermath.In this 21st century, the whole world seems to be on fire. America burns. Europe burns. Greece is reeling after its own tragedy of fire.And Australia burns, as it has always done, but now so much more fiercely.In February 2009, wildfires burnt through entire communities, taking 173 lives and injuring hundreds, whi...