WINNER OF THE DEREK WALCOTT PRIZE FOR POETRYJulia Copus's new collection, Girlhood, is a book of transgressed boundaries and seductive veneers. Restlessly inquisitive, it exposes the shifting power balance between things on the verge of becoming and the forces that threaten to destroy them.Reading these poems, we have the sense of encountering a series of filmic installations arranged by episode in a gallery. Lost, censored or disparaged voices speak out from seclude...

When night falls my bed is an air balloon.I sail through the slipsiverse, close by the moon.I float above treetops where fluttertufts are sleepingAnd flowering hills where the whifflepigs go creeping;Ponds strung with starlight that glitter like glass,A floog with her velvet nose bent to the grass.Such treasures I spy on! My bed in the treesSwings me up high, like a circus trapeze.Now the cool, night-rustling airSlips through m...

100 poems to reach for on dark nights, selected by Julia Copus.These are poems to wander about in and commit to memory so they can be stored away in the deep heart's core; places to visit and return to at will.Poems that reawaken the senses and offer new ways of looking; that unsettle us and reconnect us to the world that surrounds us; that bring us to a place of greater clarity.Life Support includes a star-studded cast of authors including William Wordswort...

Told in fizzingly original rhymes from a rising star in the poetry world this was the first brand-new picture book on the Faber Children's list.The tale of a hog in the fog.This is the story of Candy Stripe Liland Harry the Hog who lived over the hill.. . . and a foggy March day, roundabout three,when Lil had invited Harry for tea .Lil is expecting Harry the Hog for tea, but there's ...

Julia Copus's poems bring humanity and light to some of our most intimate and solitary moments, repeatedly breathing life into loss. In two previous collections, she has been feted as among the most compelling poets to have emerged in recent years; now, in The World's Two Smallest Humans, she is writing at her most captivating yet. These finely tuned poems are the fruit of her upbringing in a musical family, an affinity with the Classics, a fascination with the arc of time, and an unflinch...

It was night in the village - a still, dark night -and Harry the Hog was sleeping tight.In her house at the foot of Piggyback Hill,also asleep, was Candy Stripe Lil.The second Harry and Lil story from acclaimed Faber poet Julia Copus, who has recently turned her hand to picture books for the first time! The tale of a hog - and his friend Candy Stripe Lil - kept awake by mysterious noises in the night is sure to delight adults ...

One Saturday, in the middle of June,one bright and windy afternoon,all the creatures by Piggyback Woodwere getting ready - as fast as they could.There was only a short time left to preparefor the birthday party at Badger's lair.On the invitation was written in red:Will guests please arrive with a hat on their head?Harry and Lil are getting ready for Badger's party, but just as Lil goes to get her hat off the washing line, it flies a...

Philip Larkin (1922-1985) remains England's best-loved poet - a writer matchlessly capable of evoking his native land and of touching all readers from the most sophisticated intellectual to the proverbial common reader. The late John Betjeman observed that 'this tenderly observant poet writes clearly, rhythmically, and thoughtfully about what all of us can understand'. Behind this modest description lies a poet who made greatness look, in Milton's prescription, 'simple, sensuous and passio...

Sylvia Plath is one of the defining voices in twentieth-century poetry. This classic selection of her work, made by her former husband Ted Hughes, provides the perfect introduction to this most influential of poets. The poems are taken from Sylvia Plath's four collections Ariel , The Colossus , Crossing the Water and Winter Trees, and includes many of her most-celebrated works, such as 'Daddy', 'Lady Lazarus' and 'Wuthering Heights'.

'An irresistibly coherent book which celebrates the rising and the raising of the human spirit.' Michael Hofmann, The Times'If any poetry written today can have this 'redemptive effect' - as Heaney in his critical writing has begun to claim it can - then this is it.' Mick Imlah, Independent on Sunday

A superbly poised and finely nuanced short story, tracking a pivotal point in a relationship built on reticence and recognition of differences. In the wintry light of the late afternoon, a man and a woman walk through snow-covered palace gardens. Their careful conversation skates over intensely private thoughts, their feelings and memories buried deep like the gardens under the snow. As darkness falls and they fail to find the exit, both the past and their future become cl...

WINNER OF THE VICTORIAN PREMIER'S LITERARY AWARDS C.J. DENNIS PRIZE FOR POETRYSHORTLISTED FOR THE 2011 WESTERN AUSTRALIAN PREMIER'S BOOK AWARDSDisarming, warm, and always accessible, Cate Kennedy’s poems make ordinary experiences glow. Everything that suffuses her well-loved prose is here: compassion, insight, lyrical precision, and the clear, minimalist eye that reveals how life can turn on a single moment. Musing on the undercurrents and ...