Latest Releases

Truth in the Cage by Mohammad Ali Maleki ISBN 978-0-949327-05-5. $10 plus $1.00 postage (Australia), $16 (International)

Rochdford Street Press and Verity La are proud to announce the publication of Mohammad Ali Maleki’s long awaited chapbook, Truth in the Cage. Written from within Manus Island detention centre, where Mohammad has been incarcerated for the last five years, Truth in the Cage is a powerful work of personal and political poetry.

Mohammad Ali Maleki is an Iranian poet and avid gardener who has been living in detention on Manus Island for five years. His poetry, written in Farsi, is translated into English by fellow detainee Mansour Shoushtari. Mohammad uses his mobile phone to send his poems to friends in Australia who help to edit, share and publish them. Mohammad’s poem ‘The Strong Sunflower’ was the impetus for, and first work published on, Verity La’s Discoursing Diaspora project. Since then, his writing has been published by online literary journal Bluepepper and by the Blue Mountains Refugee Support Group. He has been a featured poet on Rochford Street Review and his poems and letters have been included in the Dear Prime Minister Project and at the Denmark Festival of Voice. His poem ‘Tears of Stone’ was shortlisted for the Red Room Company’s 2016 New Shoots Poetry Prize and received Special Commendation for extraordinary work in extreme circumstances. His poem ‘Silence Land’ was performed at the 2017 Queensland Poetry Festival as part of the Writing Through Fences performance, Through the Moon. An essay about his writing is forthcoming in the Extreme Texts Issue of Jacket2 magazine. Despite living in extreme conditions, Mohammad continues to create poetry saying, ‘You can find my whole life in my poems, like a letter to God.’

“Mohammad Ali Maleki, along with translator Mansour Shoshtari, present an intimate and lyrical window into their world of exile as political prisoners of Australia. The work is woven with an embodied sense of their poetic and literary heritages, resulting in deeply engaging, contemplative and passionate poems.  Maleki’s direct use of language often opens out into a magical horror – no less real – implicating the reader as much as the poet in a deconstruction and reconstruction of identity. ‘What if the woollen jacket I am wearing unravels / and begins to fall apart?’. Truth in the Cage delivers truths, uncomfortable and often torturous, through a painterly language, providing much-needed clarity in these times of obfuscation and systematic silencing”

 – Janet Galbraith, Writing Through Fences

Within Australia $10 plus $1 postage
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Outside Australia
$16 including postage

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Cactus by Stevi-Lee Alver ISBN: 978-0-949327-03-1. $7.50 (plus $1 postage).

Based in the Northern Rivers region of NSW, Stevi-Lee Alver has had her fiction, poetry, and reviews published across Australia and the United States. In 2014, while studying at the University of Massachusetts, she received the Class of 1940 Creative Writing Award for poetry. She was one of the winners of the 2014 Questions Writing Prize for her short-story ‘Phoenix’. She received the 2015 Southern Cross University award for Excellence in The Arts and has published a number of reviews and articles in Rochford Street Review. Stevi-Lee currently works at the North Coast Cancer Institute and studies at Southern Cross University. Cactus is her first book.

Cactus Beach: famous for its left and right hand breaks. Two women soak up sea, desert, sun and sensuality in this spare meditation on love.
–Susan Hawthorne

Cactus is a sensate invocation for entanglement in our biosphere-in-delicate-balance. Via her own fine judgement, emerging writer Stevi-Lee Alver potentiates the prose poem, making a ‘surfie chick’ narrative into a deeply affecting bel canto.
– Moya Costello

$7.50 plus $1.00 Postage
(within Australia)

$16.00, including Postage
Outside Australia

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Now available from Island Press

Concrete Flamingos by Mark Roberts $20

Mark Roberts was born in Sydney and has been active in the writing community since the early 1980s. He has been widely published in journals, magazines and anthologies both in Australian and overseas. He co-founded the occasional literary journal P76 in 1982 and set up Rochford Street Press in the same year. In 2011 Mark founded he online cultural review journal Rochford Street Review and he is currently poetry editor for Social Alternatives journal. Concrete Flamingos is his first major collection of poetry.

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“Concrete Flamingos is a long-awaited collection of work from a writer who has been a prominent behind-the-scenes presence in the Sydney literary scene for decades. The work has an uncanny familiarity but traverses a wide conceptual and literary territory. Very Sydney, self-consciously writerly and drily witty. The collection includes moving memory pieces from a Sydney childhood alongside conceptual pieces that reference other writers. Whilst embracing international influences like The New York School, Mark Roberts’ work is distinctly authentic and effortlessly political”.
………………………………………………………………………………– Anna Couani

“In these ironic contemplative poems, Roberts has examined our literature and assumptions with precision, depth  and delicacy…”
……………………………………………………………………………..– Rae Desmond Jones

“What is our time, our current moment about? Has the near future arrived? Mark Roberts is a poet I would read for a (non)answer. What cannot be said is said. Here is a voice that slips between the ribs, where you want it to, to offer succour for the incommensurable, where no other balm is available but these poems.”
…………………………………………………………………………….– Moya Costello

Within Australia $20

or

Mail $20 Cheque/Money Order to Mark Roberts, PO Box 5399 Chatswood West NSW 1515
(make Cheques payable to Mark Roberts) or Island Press 29 Park Rd, Woodford NSW 2778 Australia. (make Cheques payable to Island Press)

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Before Bone and Viscera by Robbie Coburn. ISBN 978-0-949327-01-7 16 Pages. $10.00 plus $1 postage.

Robbie Coburn was born in June 1994 in Melbourne and lives in the rural district of Woodstock, Victoria. His first book-length collection of poetry Rain Season (Picaro Press) was published in 2013 and he is well into a second book titled the other flesh. Before Bone and Viscera is his eagerly awaited second chapbook. He has also recently finished writing an autobiographical novella, A Day without Me, that he plans to publish in the near future.
His website is: www.robbiecoburn.com.au

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“Coburn’s new book disturbs & enriches. There is a grace as it sculpts language & meaning… a flensing poignancy underlines these superb poems. This is not an easy book… its ruthless eviscerated clarity & honesty scar the eye.” – Les Wicks

“Before Bone and Viscera lifts the voice of Australian poetry into new territory. Robbie Coburn tears away all you think you know to reveal these poems; naked in their lyrical and surreal simplicity they unearth the anatomy and geography of poetic imagination. To read these poems is to get your hands into the blood and guts of life itself.” – Nathan Hondros

“An intense, at times disturbing, emotional journey employing a surreal, fetishist use of the human body reminiscent of the painter, Francis Bacon.” S.K. Kelen

Within Australia $10.00 plus $1 postage

International Aus$16.00

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P76 Issue 7 – Special Cornelis Vleeskens Issue $15

P76 Issue 7 is a special issue devoted to Cornelis Vleeskens and has been guest edited by Pete Spence. The issue contains a selection of published and unpublished work by Vleeskens and includes poetry, visual poetry and artwork. Jenni Mitchell  and Scott Bugbird write of their memories of Vleeskens while Mark Roberts revisits some of his major collections of poetry.

Within Australia $15

International Aust$29

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Kynetonbury Tales or Dog Days by Pete Spence. ISBN 978-0-949327-00-0. 12 pages. $7.50

Chaucer’s main mistake was that he didn’t make any of his central characters a dog. Pete Spence doesn’t fall into the same trap in his small epic poem Kynetonbury Tales. Full of characters that you will recognise and poetry that will delight and surprise, this is an eagerly awaited publication.

“Pete Spence’s wonderfully eccentric poetry never sits still. Irreverently allusive, Spence’s poems revel in the play and possibilities of language and the imagination.” – Cam Lowe

“Spence is a poet of fraternity –which includes conviviality & melancholy… No wonder his recent poem in progress is called The Kynetonbury Tales, and a delight it’s been to read via e-mail”. – Kris Hemensley, Rochford Street Review

Within Australia $7.50

International Aus$12

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The Selected Your Friendly Fascist. Edited by Rae Desmond Jones. ISBN 978-0-646-58605-2. 2012 (Colour covers, black and white pages $20).

“Your Friendly Fascist was a poetry magazine so deep underground that it caused tremors among persons of a pious literary persuasion on the dread occasions of its appearance. The magazine served as an outlet for views and feelings which are not expressed in polite company. Your Friendly Fascist was not the only outrageous small literary publication of its time, but it took pleasure in divergent views. Poetry can tend to sombre pomposity, or the self –consciously polite. If there is a secret to the Fascist’s modest success, it is in the energy with which it rode on the un-ironed coat tails of unruly expression. Rae Desmond Jones and John Edwards remained at the helm of the magazine despite frequent inebriation, from the magazine’s beginnings in 1971 to its final burial with absolutely no honours at all in 1986. Rae Desmond Jones has made a selection of material that appeared in YFF and pulled together a creation that sits well with the ratbaggery tradition that was Your Friendly Fascist.”

The Selected Your Friendly Fascist t contains work by John Jenkins, Mike Lenihan, Rob Andrew, Denis Gallagher, Adrian Flavell, Peter Brown, Debbie Westbury, Carol White, Billy Ah Lun, Peter Brown, Lis Aroney, Patrick Alexander, Steve Sneyd, Ken Bolton, Nigel Saad, John Edwards, Robert C. Boyce, Rae Desmond Jones, Trevor Corliss, Kit Kelen, Rob Andrew, Jean Rhodes, Larry Buttrose, Joseph Chetcuti, Alamgir Hashmi, Anne Wilkinson, Jenny Boult (aka MML Bliss), George Cairncross (UK), John Peter Horsam, Steven K. Kelen, Irene Wettenhall, Chris Mansell, Robert Carter, Anne Davies, Nicholas Pounder, Cornelis Vleeskens, Andrew Rose, Joanne Burns, Les Wicks, Eric Beach, Ian, Gig Ryan, П. O., Barry Edgar Pilcher, Andrew Darlington, Dorothy Porter, Gary Oliver, Richard Tipping, Micah, Carol Novack, Peter Finch, Evan Rainer, Graham Rowlands, Christopher Pollnitz, Robert Carter, Philip Neilsen, Andrew Chadwick, Stephan Williams, Rollin Schlicht, Philip Hammial, John Peter Horsam, Peter Murphy, Karen Ellis, Richard James Allen, Rudi Krausmann, Paul “Shakey” Brown, Michael Sharkey, Karen Hughes, Susan Hampton, Rory Harris, Pie Corbett and Billy Marshall Stoneking.

Within Australia $20

International Aust$30

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P76 Issue 6 (The Lost Issue) – $15

Issue 6 has been edited by Mark Roberts and Linda Adair. It contains work by M T C Cronin, Adrian D’Ambra, Rae Desmond Jones, David J Cookson,  Gary Dunne, James Bradley, Coral Hull, Margaret Bradstock,  John O’Brien and joanne burns. Review of Victor Kelleher’s Wintering and Andrew McGahan’s Praise. Cover Design and art work by Narelle Adair. Artwork by Karin Jackson and Lucie Adair-Roberts.

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Within Australia $15

International Aust$25

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Back List

We have an extremely small number of these books which we are selling to fund the ongoing activities of Rochford Street Press and Rochford Street Review. Be quick or miss out!

Dipti Saravanamuttu – Statistic for the New World. (1988) $20

Dipti Saravanamuttu’s first poetry collection published in 1988. 53 Pages.

“Dipti Saravanmuttu sets a high Standard with her first collection of poems. The poems, though at times difficult, are inventive and original and the work is always entertaining. Throughout one is aware of an intelligence working with the precocious limits of language and association…” Judith Beveridge

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Within Australia $20

International Aust$27.50

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Les Wicks – Cannibals…Humans Have Soft Centres (1985) – $15.

Les Wicks’ second published volume (1985) – there are only a handful of copies left so be quick!.

• Les’ poetry has the romantic sneer of experience entrenched…. duck ponds & screaming traffic Grant Caldwell
• What was it like to live now? Read Wicks, Brown, Bolton, Henry, Caldwell, Beach, Lysenko. Kevin Brophy.
• Broad satire & comedy…good sleazy fun  Rae Desmond Jones

Gestetnered on white paper with printed cover. Side Stapled.

Out of stock

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Mark Roberts – Stepping Out of Line (1985)  $10

Mark Roberts’ first and only book (1985) is an extended prose poem in 14 parts about a road trip around the south coast of NSW.

Gestetnered on orange paper. Side Stapled

Out of stock

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Minute to Midnight: New Writing for Peace and Disarmament. Red Spark Books 1985. (Editorial Collective – Anna Couani, Christopher Kelen, Carmel Kelly and Mark Roberts) $15

Minute to Midnight is a collection of creative writing on the theme of peace and disarmament. Writers include: Adam Aitken, Marcus Breen, Barbara Brooks, Colleen Burke, Joanne Burns, Grant Caldwell, Margo Carlisle, John Croyston, Gary Dunne, Betty Johnston, Rae Desmond Jones, Christopher (Kit) Kelen, Sk.K. Kelen, Carmel Kelly, Denis Kevans, Paul Knobel, Thien Lang, Annee Lawrence, Uyen Loewald, Margaret Maddock, cjr Maj, Chris Mansell, Fiona McIlroy, Melinskquey, Finola Moorhead, Vera Newsom, Dorothy Featherstone Porter, Craig Powell, Mark Roberts, Cliff Smyth, Amanda Stewart, Bill Turner, Ryn Vlachou, Sarah St Vincent Welch and Les Wicks.

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P76 Issue 5 – $10

Issue 5 was published in Spring 1991 and was edited by Linda Adair and Mark Roberts and contains work by: Chris Mansell, Myron Lysenko, Beth Spencer, Bill Fewer, Philip Hammial, Jenny Boult, Patrick Whitmam, Christine Lindberg, Dipti Saravanamuttu, Jurate Sasnaitis, Mike Greenacre, Rosanne Musu, Javant Biarujia, Martin Smith, Yu-Li Hu, C E Hull, Carole Wilkins, Graham Rowlands, Jane Skelton, Sheila Murphy, Sarah St Vincent Welch and Jan Orr. Reviews of Susan Hampton’s White Dog Sonnets, Judith Beveridge’s The Domesticity of Giraffes, Mal Morgan’s a handshake with the moon, Richard Allen’s The Way Out at Last and Other Poems,  Finola Morhead’s Remember the Tarantella, Fiona Place’s Cardboard, Gerad Lee Troppo Man and  Beth Yahp, Margo Daly and Lorraine My Looks Caress: A Collection of Modern Romances.

Within Australia $10

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