Giramondo Publishing warmly invites you to the launch of the new collection of poems by Kate Fagan: First Light

To be launched by Pam Brown

First Light explores the threshold between things and words, seeking out places where music and language are equal in charting human experience. Some poems sample from other writers to create new works, often as gifts for friends. Some meditate on the tipping point between poetry and prose, or revisit established forms, such as sonnets and love letters, to stage a conversation between poetry and song. Alongside these more experimental sequences is a series of discrete lyrics, ‘Authentic Nature’, which responds to specifically Australian habitats – political, cultural and ecological – while asking about the role of ‘nature’ in poetic writing.

Kate Fagan’s previous collections of poetry include The Long Moment and return to a new physics. Her poems have appeared in major anthologies and in the Weekend Australian, the Age and on ABC TV. An acclaimed musician and songwriter, her album Diamond Wheel won the National Film and Sound Archive Award for Best Folk Album. She lectures in literature at the University of Western Sydney.

‘First Light offers a world in which everything is on the verge of transfiguration – hyper-animate, meta-poetical, full of ineluctable energies. There’s an intelligence here that is brilliantly compelling, and a lovely tenderness and wisdom to its utterly original vision.’ Gail Jones