Black Pepper Publishing

Black Pepper Publishing Melbourne based boutique publishing house. Since then, Black Pepper has published over two dozen poetry titles. Founded by K.F. Have a look at our list.
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It needed Black Pepper
Black Pepper and poetry

Cordite, No. 2, 1997

It was a dark and stormy poetry scene in mid 1995 when Black Pepper commenced publishing poetry with its second title, the Anne Elder award-winning Michelangelo's Prisoners by Jennifer Harrison. Pearson and Gail Hannah, Black Pepper is a press which actively seeks out new talents amongst its poets with several titles published b

eing first collections, and which seeks to act as a repertory publisher, with an ongoing relationship between publisher and writer, which is important for both author and publisher. It's not much good finding a publisher only to be thrown back into a desolate marketplace with your next book. Our philosophy is straightforward, revolving around literary excellence, and giving no preference to one school of poetry over another. Indeed diversity is a feature of a list that includes Anne Fairbairn's reworking of a Persian text in An Australian Conference of the Birds, Louis De Paor's Irish language Sentences of Earth & Stone / Gobán Cré is Cloth, with en-face translations, and the single line 'dreamline' poems of John Anderson. We are interested in successful experimental work as well as more traditional poetry which shines through. A perceived lack of poetry publishers and contracting poetry lists in the late 1990s was part of the reason for the birth of Black Pepper and in a short time we became a first choice publisher for many poets. Our list continues to grow with several poetry titles per year, six in 2004. David Brooks has written that 'Poetry, I think, is rather like the frog in the ecosystem, an index of the health of the whole' and when poets as outstanding as the late John Anderson had their careers put on hold for the lack of a publisher, the frogs are being badly done by. Black Pepper has authors who have published both poetry and fiction: Navigatio the novel, by poet Alison Croggon, which came out to substantial critical acclaim, including the perceptive comment by Robert Gray that this was a long prose poem; and Mosaics & Mirrors, a poetry collection co-authored by Graham Henderson, playwright and author. The black spines of our twenty-six poetry titles to date - soon to be thirty-two titles - contain works by poets adding spice to the soup of Modern Australian poetry. Have a look at our cover designs by Gail Hannah and see what you think. Is our list to your taste, or could we add a little more Black Pepper?

11/06/2025

Biblical View
OLD TESTAMENT/
NEW TALMUD

11/06/2025

With a Painter's Title

Mother and Child

Adelaide

A naked woman clasps to herself a child,
naked herself but for the pants she slept in,
walking sleepy bundle holding sleepy bundle
before the one deposits the other down
while she the carrier showers to wake herself.
A watcher could have turned away and cried,
for given love, and for this education.

The child she held was female.
May she have a gentle life.

RAFAH 2024

She cuddles her child as best she can,
her head looks too big for her body,
resting on her shoulder in sobs,
torso like framework wrapped in brown paper.
She spoons her soup from boiled bark and last bay leaves,
such nourishment tiny sip by tiny sip.
Her daughter, she thinks, has only days.

Israel intercepts aid ship.
09/06/2025

Israel intercepts aid ship.

Israeli media says activists face detention if they fail to comply with Israeli army orders.

07/06/2025

One from 2021. Never learn.
United Nations Report

And the roses rode pillion
when they buried the children
at the start of the war
for the length of the war
till the end of the war
and the war after that
when tired florists cut
roses to ride pillion
as they went in procession
and the florists cut more
for the turmoil of war
and they cut more and more
and it went on and on
and a child might escape
to pillage and r**e
in its adult turn
and it went on and on
and their God was a weapon
their chorus and song
and florists and gardens
could hardly begin
to crop and to harvest
over season and time
a blood rose at its best
to go with the coffins
when they buried the children
from any religion
in province or region

where they buried the children
and roses rode pillion
red roses rode pillion

and roses ride pillion.

04/06/2025

Written at the start of the war

NO BASSINET

Rock-a-bye, baby, in your mother’s arms.
How long is infancy surrounded by bombs?

GAZA STENCILS

1

A four hour combat pause daily is not a ceasefire.
It is guaranteed to cause increase in screaming fear.

2

You can compare a cucumber with a leaf.
Statistics give the numbers, wailing gives the grief.

3

Be still, my uncomfortable heart.
Dream this rubble is end of all hurt.

4

For the unknown energizing artist, born a little immature
humidicrib cannot assist, electricity deliberately insecure.

5

Let there be no food; let there be no fuel;.
it’s all to the good to show how we’re cruel.

6

Driven from the hospital. the ill and the halt
are forced to travel to an unsure retreat.

7

To missile-flatten from above a refugee tent camp
shows they would reduce it to a postage stamp.

8

A young girl on her bicycle, by direct hit or by shrapnel
falls dead on the ground, front wheel still turning around.

30/05/2025

BY BIRTHPLACE ALONE

I tell you to remember her
Yaqeen Hammad, aged 11,
precocious media influencer
whose posts told of wounds
of those younger than her,
of agonies older than her
merely by her showing phone
videos of brief daily life,
so horrid her surrounds,
minted war correspondent
by her birthplace alone.
They took her out with a bomb.
Remember Yaqueen.

29/05/2025

Bleak future at most.

WHAT IF, WHAT NOW

What will you do now, my Gaza,
What will you do now, my Gaza,
today if the war had been done?
The truth is a heartbreak rebuild,
many homes atomised by bombardment,
infrastructure a twisted mess,
no gathering-place Mosque,
population less than it was,
when many must take up a spade
or pickaxe that makes each afraid
the slab they dissect may reveal
maggots feasting on a human
as if the end of their Ramadan.
What will you do now, my Gaza?

Be more resolute and as enduring
as you were under daily direct fire.
The moral balance now on your side,
you’ll receive international aid aplenty
if not as much as was weapons of war.
Self interest too is now on your side,
being needed for prosperous trade.
Bulldozer companies will offer cheap loans.
Free dollars and gifts will also flow in.
Disaster is open opportunity for capital.
High rises and factories advantage both,
first with the build and later production
(perhaps even green space or small oasis).
A pity unproductive hospitals are required.
Mendicants are not unknown in the region.
What will you do now, my Gaza?
Today should war ever be done.

26/05/2025

The famine will be televised

Ironically we absorb in bite size
enforced famine and genocide;
firstly as horror in the nightly news
then a lower headline in later news.
Visible-ribbed children are frequent,
nappies dropping from undeveloped hips.
A child is sunken-eyed and thin-necked.
A mother’s thin hand props up a head.
A father to camera has only a plea.
All the world’s televisions
watch starvation of Palestinians.

Israel!
O Israel, you have hardened our hearts.

18/05/2025

Lament for the staved
Khan Younis, May 2025

I wail. I wail. I wail.
I wail for my child’s cries,
a toddler who cannot toddle,
her bones are now so weak.
I hold frail jaws and dribble spittle,
my only liquid into her mouth,
frail bird myself with a nestling.
I wail. I wail. I wail.
but it dried out my throat.
Why give her such hate?
I wail. I wail. I wail.
to force her slowly stave?
I wail. I wail. I wail.
And I can’t afford a grave.
I wail. I wail. I wail.
I wail. I wail. I wail.

16/05/2025

POST CONQUEST

Now rubble is pulverised to gravel
and human beings are skeletons at best
they will say the land is terra nullius
so they are free as new imperialists

to do as any land invader does
build church and jail and edifice,
wharf, conning tower, high rise,
and homes, hospital and hospice

and weapons for attach and defence
to guard against an ingrained sense
of collapse as it surely must
come to all who build on dust.

13/05/2025

As Trump visits the Middle East.

WHAT IF, WHAT NOW

What will you do now, my Gaza,
What will you do now, my Gaza,
today if the war had been done?
The truth is a heartbreak rebuild,
many homes atomised by bombardment,
infrastructure a twisted mess,
no gathering-place Mosque,
population less than it was,
when many must take up a spade
or pickaxe that makes each afraid
the slab they dissect may reveal
maggots feasting on a human
as if the end of their Ramadan.
What will you do now, my Gaza?

Be more resolute and as enduring
as you were under daily direct fire.
The moral balance now on your side,
you’ll receive international aid aplenty
if not as much as was weapons of war.
Self interest too is now on your side,
being needed for prosperous trade.
Bulldozer companies will offer cheap loans.
Free dollars and gifts will also flow in.
Disaster is open opportunity for capital.
High rises and factories advantage both,
first with the build and later production
(perhaps even green space or small oasis).
A pity unproductive hospitals are required.
Mendicants are not unknown in the region.
What will you do now, my Gaza?
Today should war ever be done.

11/05/2025

WEATHERBOARD LAUNDRY
for Jocelyn Harewood

Her sturdy copper stick was white,
bleached from tree-brown by repeated
stirring of laundry in soapy boiling hot
water in the cooper tub each Monday
in the washhouse by the outside toilet.
KF’s slight mother hauls with her stick
hot wet dripping weight of white sheets
across to the nearest of twin concrete
rinsing tubs, with little KF at her washday
skirt like a puppy. She gives him a squeeze
then drags the sheet over to the nearest tub.
She turns cold water onto the first hot sheet,
steam arising in summer wafting out open louvers
now in winter emanating an illusion of warmth.
She turns and pokes and prods, again and again
with copper stick, separating out soap from the boil.
Time doing that churning allowing wet sheet to cool
enough to be handled, so now she can thread and spread
it through a tight hand wringer into the other empty tub.
Pushing handle of her wringer up and down, up and down
is tiresome and hard, water squeezed back into original tub.
This is hard labour, perhaps more than husband’s at work.

She sits a moment then heaves the wringed-out sheet across
to cane washing basket mounted on a four wheel metal trolley
with an old biscuit tin, chocker with pegs, wired to its front.
She rolls it over concrete path and mown lawn to clothesline,
steel-core wire stretched across the full width of the backyard,
her ‘puppy’ having followed her every move along the way.
She throws the sheet over, then stretches it evenly along line.
Now he’s a helper, hands up wooden pegs, child labour of love.
Once she is finished pe***ng it, she will raise up the washing
with a pole, to keep it from ground and to better catch wind.

Address

403 St Georges Road
Melbourne, VIC
3068

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 5pm
Tuesday 9am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 5pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 5pm

Telephone

03 94891716

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