Vagabond Press

14/03/2022

Modern Woman is a collaborative, site-based work—part poetry reading, part theatre—centring on the representation and performance of gender. Responding to the quasi-domestic composition of objects on display in the 17th to 18th Century European Paintings Gallery, and taking cues from Jean Genet...

27/01/2022

Thanks to everyone who supported our 2022 new work crowdfunding campaign. You stopped us from going under.

We didn't reach our crowdfunding target, but we've taken a deep breath and sent the new titles to press! Thanks to all the poets who were beautiful and generous to work with (not least for checking proofs over Christmas!).

2022 is still going to be a struggle, but after a train wreck couple of years we're just grateful to still be able to do what we love and make books.

Many thanks to everyone who has helped us survive into 2022 by contributing to our New Work campaign. Thanks to you we're able to keep doing what we love, making books and seeing new writing from Australia and Asia Pacific to readers. While we haven't yet reached our crowdfunding target, we've taken...

29/12/2021

Less than two weeks ago, after having funding applications rejected by RISE, the Australia Council for the Arts along with one we were attached to with Create NSW, we set up a GoFundMe campaign and turned to our community for help to see five collections of Australian poetry into the world and to keep us publishing.

The supporters listed below are giving us that chance. Thanks to Bret Walker for catapulting us into the homestretch a couple days ago and to every single supporter of the poets, the books and the press.

We worked with the poets over the last two weeks, in what was a really enjoyable and easy process, and we're happy to say all five books are now typeset and ready to head to our printers on Jan 3. We're very close to reaching our goal, and very close to pushing print.

We're grateful to be looking at surviving another year and hope we'll be celebrating the release of new work by Emilie Collyer, Peter Boyle, Misbah Wolf, Suzanne Verrall and Luke Fischer in the new year.

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU:

Anon, Rose Cavanagh, Anon, Elaine Minor, D Burbrook, Taish Shaw, Anon, H F Jones, Vanessa Bates, Alice Bishop, Oliver Coleman, Camilla A Hannan, Kieran Carroll, Madeleine Flynn, Vanessa Chapple, Vikki Petraitis, Darry Fraser, Peta Murray, Tony Messenger, Brenton Carey, Anon, Anon, Michele Lee, Cat Hope, Vicki Packer, Raimondo Cortese, Anon, Emilie Baker, Amanda Buckley, Kevin Hopkins, Ahmarnya Price, Anon, Anon, Wahibe Moussa, Catherine Traicos, Jane Rawson, Anon, Romy Ash, Anon, Anon, JM Green, Ben Ellis, Alana Kelsall, Andy Jackson, Amra Pajalic, Anon, Kiran Bhat, Anon, Mish Leber, Angela Costi, Kate Hood, Deborah Lee, Tamara Saulwick, Anne Wilson, Alison Croggon, Brigid Connor, Bridget Balodis, Jessica Griffiths, Thunder Verrall, Vrasidas Karalis, Tamryn Bennett, Bronywn Sharpe, Ravi Shankar, Sonya Suares, Anon, Folke Tersman, Martin Duwell, Anon, Emma Hall, Danielle Celermajer, Nathaniel Williams, Anne M Carson, Dan Giovannoni, Anon, Maryla Rose, Judith Beveridge, Damian Callinan, Stephen Edgar, Michael Havir, Jacqui Malins, Lab Kelpie, Josiah Lulham, Sam Shpall, Bridgette Burton, Goetz Richter, Clinton Green, Michele Seminara, Patricia Cornelius, Toby Davidson, Prudence Clark, Angela Meyer, Alice Allan, Sandra Renew, Alice Ansara, Jeanette Tong, Fran Ponsonby, Simeon Kronenberg, Anon, Anon, Claudine Lebrun, Telia Nevile, Judith Bishop, Anon, Andrew Baldwin, Bronwyn Blaiklock, Daniel Schlusser, Michelle Cahill, Josh Cake, Miriam Mani, Liz Allen, Anon, Toni Jordan, Marco Cher, Hilary Bell, Anon, Anon, Wendy Fleming, Marion Schwarzrock, William McBride, Demet Divaroren, Imbi Neeme, Gabriella Munoz, Katherine Tonkin, Tricky Walsh, Mukesh V, Anon, Anon, Gerard Lewis-Fitzgerald, Kym Bagley, Morgan Aldrich, Anon, Anon, Anon, M Lewis, Terri-ann White, Adam Ford, Mal McKimmie, Laura Brinson, Bryony Wilson, Anon, Helena Spyrou, Georgia Symons, Ian McCloud, Ann Shenfield, Anon, Anon, Louise Carter, D E Killian, Anon, Vicki Bennett, Pompei Ranaldo, Ruth Fogarty, Erin Shiel, Jenny Toune, Helen Snyders, Tricia Dearborn, Anon, Ali Wurm, JF Knight, Danielle Dona, Christopher (Kit) Kelen, Georgina Capper, Adam May, Anon, Prithvi Varatharajan, Bret Walker, Anon, Anon, Anon, Anon, Anders Villani, Jacqueline McEvoy, Mark Reid, Jean Kent, Georgina Mercer, Mark Mahemoff, Bernadette Trench-Thiedeman, Alex Skovron, David Adès.

Especial thanks to major donors Bret Walker, D Burbrook, Vrasidas Karalis, Danielle Celermajer, Kym Bagley and four anonymous friends of the press and poets.

https://gofund.me/05803a35

All we want to do is make books We're a small literary press ba… Vagabond Press needs your support for New work: Collyer, Boyle, Wolf, Verrall, Fischer

25/12/2021

Check out the covers for the books we hope to publish in 2022.

We love making books. For twenty years we have been devoted to fostering new writing and increasing the range and diversity of Australian literature and bringing literature from Asia Pacific to English-language readers for the first time. We have taken risks and published books that otherwise would....

22/12/2021

Proud to announce, Peter Boyle's 'Notes Towards the Dreambook of Endings' has been shortlisted for the John Bray Poetry Award alongside a stellar shortlist. Congratulations to Peter Boyle who we have had the great pleasure to work with for over two decades and numerous books, and to all the shortlistees.

Celebrating South Australia’s writing culture by offering national and State-based prizes across a range of literary genres, as well as three fellowships for South Australian writers.

22/12/2021

Yesterday our application to the RISE grants fund was rejected, the government preferring Guns n' Roses to Australian poetry, which is just one of those life choices we all have to make eventually.

That's three for three on rejections from the government in the last month, which just makes the recent grassroots support that much sweeter, vital and sustaining.

If you're want to help us publish new collections by Emilie Collyer, Peter Boyle, Misbah Wolf, Suzanne Verrall and Luke Fischer in early 2022, think about leaving a little something under the tree via the link below.

https://gofund.me/05803a35

All we want to do is make books We're a small literary press ba… Vagabond Press needs your support for New work: Collyer, Boyle, Wolf, Verrall, Fischer

15/12/2021

Help keep us publishing in 2022. Please support and share if you can. Five great collections by five brilliant Australian writers, with other collections in the wings if everything goes well.

All we want to do is make books We're a small literary press base… Vagabond Press needs your support for New work: Collyer, Boyle, Wolf, Verrall, Fischer

13/12/2021

Coming up in Melbourne this Sunday! Go celebrate with these beautiful bighearted brilliant poets. So proud to publish every single one of them and hope to continue publishing them all into the future.

07/12/2021

Congratulations to Eleanor Jackson. Her debut collection 'Gravidity and Parity' was highly commended in the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards 2022.

Gravidity and Parity explores the narrative opportunities of pregnancy loss, pregnancy and early motherhood set against the unfolding experience of the COVID 19 pandemic. With bleak humour, crisp language and the intricate realities of the body, Gravidity and Parity considers the natal taboo while d...

06/12/2021

Congratulations to Adam Aitken for winning the Patrick White Literary Award 2021. www.vagabondpress.net

Independent literary press based in Sydney.

15/04/2021

Six-seven titles heading to press (praise be ozco and our donors, a thousand blessings), and we'd like to add in two more, so we're panhandling again.

If you have leeway: donate, buy a book or share.

Just as new books by Shinkawa, Tanikawa, Holt, Li, Kinsella, Jackson and Vickery … Vagabond Press needs your support for Vagabond Press - New Work Fund 2021-2

04/01/2021

To celebrate surviving 2020 and the release of Peter Boyle's 'Notes Towards The Dreambook of Endings' we're offering free postage in Australia on all orders for a week.

At checkout, just use the discount code: New year, new books

Support independent publishing and celebrate the new year with some of the best contemporary poetry from around the world.

Against the backdrop of a world in crisis these poems speak of grief and beauty, of spirituality and resilience. Poems responding to nature, ekphrastic poems and meditations on the randomness of fate sit alongside more personal poems of loss, while in the title sequence dream narratives are interspe...

31/12/2020

We're starting 2021 right with the release of Peter Boyle's 'Notes Towards The Dreambook of Endings.' Peter has been with us since the very beginning of the press. We're so proud to work with Peter two decades on and so grateful for all the years of warmth, generous practical support and inspiration.

After a long delay, we have also received the reprint of Natalie Harkin's 'Archival-Poetics' and 'Poems of Hwang Yuwon, Ha Jaeyoun & Seo Dae-kyung'. Thanks to everyone who patiently waited for your copies, they are now in the post to you.

Thanks to everyone who supported our recent fundraiser and the support through the Australia Council for the Arts, Mothership Studios and Peter Boyle we survived 2020 and we now have a way through 2021. With a year's breathing room we plan on bringing out around ten titles planned and take the time to keep looking for the right home for the press at a university or else ongoing support from some good-hearted philanthropist with a passion for new writing out of Asia Pacific.

But right now, we're so proud to be able to see Peter Boyle's new collection to readers. There's a paperback edition and a limited edition hardback (only about 35 copies available) ... so if you feel like grabbing a copy or sending a copy to a friend, follow the link below.

Wishing all our readers a happy and safe new year in 2021.

https://vagabondpress.net/collections/facebook/products/peter-boyle-notes-towards-the-dreambook-of-endings

Against the backdrop of a world in crisis these poems speak of grief and beauty, of spirituality and resilience. Poems responding to nature, ekphrastic poems and meditations on the randomness of fate sit alongside more personal poems of loss, while in the title sequence dream narratives are interspe...

25/12/2020

We made our fundraiser target!

Thank you to everyone who supported our fundraiser over the last week or so. We now have a way through 2021 and will see nine to ten titles out in the first half of the year.

Thank you to everyone for the support. You have given us a lot of hope alongside the practical support.

https://au.gofundme.com/f/keep-vagabond-press-publishing

Who are we? Vagabond Press is a small literary press based in Sydney, Australia. Fo… Vagabond Press needs your support for Vagabond Press 2021 survival fund

22/12/2020

We're over 75% of the way to our target in a week. Thanks to everyone for the vote of confidence in what we do and practical support to help us keep doing it. If anyone wants to help us get over the line, please follow the link below. Warmest thanks to everyone who has supported the fundraiser.

In other good news, after a nearly two months long delay, our shipment from the printers will arrive next Tuesday. Thanks to everyone who has been patiently waiting for their copies of Natalie Harkin's 'Archival Poetry' and 'Poems of Hwang Yuwon, Ha Jaeyoun & Seo Dae-kyung'. We'll be getting them in the post to you along with a little present to say thanks for the patience as soon as we have them.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/keep-vagabond-press-publishing

Who are we? Vagabond Press is a small literary press based in Sydney, Australia. Fo… Vagabond Press needs your support for Vagabond Press 2021 survival fund

21/12/2020

We've just sent out a 2020 wrap up to our mailing list, linked in below. Thanks to everyone who contributed to our fundraiser, we've almost reached our target in under a week and are now almost set to release eight or nine new titles in the first half of 2021.

Sending love and thanks to everyone out there who has supported us or our sibling small presses in and out of Australia by buying a book.

Wishing everyone a safe end to 2020 with people you love and that 2021 brings renewal, community and plenty new books to fuel change and the imagination.

Vagabond Press acknowledges the Gadigal and Wangal peoples of the Eora Nation, the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work and live, and recognises their continuing connection to land, water and community. We pay respect to Elders past, present and emerging.  

17/12/2020

We have just crossed the halfway mark on our fundraiser in just over 24 hours. It's impossible to underestimate what the support means.

We are so grateful for the generosity, kindness and commitment from our community of readers and writers, many who have been traveling with us since the very beginning late last century.

Over the last six months we've been barely holding on. We had started to sketch out how best to shut down while keeping the backlist available. The support and response in the last 24 hours has recommitted us to our slightly crazed vocation of making beautiful books with some of the most imaginative, iconoclastic and vital voices in contemporary literature.

Thanks to the support and the vote of confidence in what the press does, we're starting to see a clear path through 2021. We love making books. We love the books we make. We love that we are getting to a place where we can keep going, keeping our focus on making books and supporting our writers.

Who are we? Vagabond Press is a small literary press based in Sydney, Australia. F… Michael Brennan needs your support for Vagabond Press 2021 survival fund

16/12/2020

Congratulations to Natalie Harkin who has just won the Kate Challis RAKA Award with 'Archival-Poetics'.

The Judges said: 'Archival-Poetics was deemed a landmark piece of Australian poetry by the judging panel. Rooted in archival interrogation and historical reflection, the collection is a critical and timely piece that examines the origins of contemporary Australia.

The judges were struck by the overall cohesiveness of the text and the manner in which Harkin weaved the archival, the familial and the political within the poetic form. They described it as: brave, innovative and challenging.'

Congratulations to Nat who, along with being a formidable vital and essential poet, is one of the most absolutely beautiful souls to work with, we loved every step of the process working with you. Love and thanks to Pam Brown who made the introductions that let us be part of the journey.

Congratulations, Natalie!!! Beautiful way to end the year!!

Narungga woman and South Australian poet, Natalie Harkin has won the 2020 Kate Challis RAKA Award for her work Archival-Poetics, an unflinching anthology that faces the violence the colony has inflicted on Indigenous women, and offers a roadmap for healing in the centuries ahead.

15/12/2020

Somehow we've almost survived 2020. We weren't able to bring out many new titles this year and with book sales nosediving during COVID, we haven't been making rent. Without support from Mothership Studios, the Australia Council, and a handful of writer friends, our backlist would be on the street and we would have gone under.

But we haven't. And so now we're going to try to rebuild. We're aiming to produce ten new titles in 2021, more if we can. It really is a case of publish or perish for us. Ozco supported four titles and we're hoping to do another three titles at the same time. All going well, we'll then bring out three to five more titles in the second half of the year.

We love making books, but sadly it still isn't a business. If you're able to help, even just a little, by making a donation or heading to the website to buy some books, you will help keep us publishing.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/keep-vagabond-press-publishing?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_campaign=p_cf+share-flow-1

Who are we? Vagabond Press is a small literary press based in Sydney, Australia. Fo… Vagabond Press needs your support for Vagabond Press 2021 survival fund

13/11/2020

'Birth Plan' by LK Holt shortlisted in the PM's Literary Awards. Thanks to the judges and congratulations to Lucy and the other short-listees!

'Linguistically supple and engaged in experimentation with language, Holt's poems take the reader to locations as diverse as the Arapiles, Kangaroo Island and Barcelona. While apparently encompassing such experiences as childbirth, marriage, raising children and the death of a parent, Holt's collection explores too the curiosities of the natural world, juxtaposing human culture, in the form of music and art, with animals and birds. The poems connect the present with a long history of western artistic production. They place art and music in proximity with physical experiences, while also interrogating life with technology: the ubiquity of mobile electronic devices and Siri. Formally ranging from prose poems to sonnets that challenge readers' expectations about rhyme and rhythm, the poems in this volume contain arresting imagery. While titles are as diverse as 'She was Told to Have a Birth Plan' and 'I Don't Know', each poem, with its extended metaphors and precise yet original language, drives towards a new and more complete view of contemporary life, and its connections to the past.'

https://www.arts.gov.au/pm-literary-awards/current-awards

30/10/2020

Peter Boyle's award-winning 'Enfolded in the Wings of a Great Darkness' discussed at length by Bonny Cassidy in the Sydney Review of Books.

'Enfolded in the Wings of a Great Darkness is a journey of sorts; neither linear nor heroic, but certainly profound. It is a struggle between dark and dark. How to interpret the suffering of another, of the Earth, and of oneself? Whereas other poets have found ways to bear witness to telluric presence through language, Boyle is working at the hinge where psychic and material reality meet.'

'A poetry for living, Boyle shows us, will have to be harder won than observing new growth after winter.'

01/10/2020

Congratulations to Jessica Wilkinson and Fiona Hile who were both recently highly commended in the 2020 Wesley Michel Wright Prize. Read samples from their most recent collections on our new website and while you're there join our mailing list to get news of upcoming titles.

Independent literary press based in Sydney.

13/09/2020

PETER BOYLE IN CONVERSATION WITH DENISE O’HAGAN in The Blue Nib.

'Inwardness, what dreams throw up, and above all the imagination, have the capacity to bring the whole being into play, so the heart, the whole body and something different in the voice enter into the words. I think there’s a human intuition that there’s another speech, which could be like magic spells or like the profound echo of song or a line out of Shakespeare or Dante. I think, for those of us who love poetry, we’ve known the shiver of emotion as if a hand has just brushed us with a piercing tenderness. The deep things of life: absolute love, loss, death, the sense of abandonment, joy in being fully in the moment, the surprise of unexpected beauty, but also grief and deep, personally felt experiences of injustice: all cry out for a different kind of speech.' Peter Boyle

Sydney-based poet and translator, Peter Boyle talks with Denise O'Hagan about his early experiences, what inspires him and why it is important to 'let go of the hunger for fame'.

06/08/2020

If you haven't signed up for our mailing list, here's the most recent update.

Sign up via our website to get updates on titles forthcoming in 2021.

We're proud to announce that Thom Sullivan's Carte Blanche has won ASAL's 2020 Mary Gilmore Award, awarded by ASAL for the best first book of poetry published in the previous calendar year.

05/08/2020

Congratulations to Peter Boyle. 'Enfolded in the wings of a great darkness' has just shortlisted in the QLD Literary Awards' Judith Wright Calanthe Award.

'Undeniably profound, it knits its strength through frailty. It is aware of the mechanics within chance, how it sends out echoes in all directions' (from the QLD Literary Awards judges' comments)

''Enfolded in the wings of a great darkness' is an extraordinary book-length poem by poet and translator Peter Boyle. The work is a sustained study of life and death, and all that goes on in between ... Boyle explodes the physical and spiritual world around him as he is confronted with the end of life in the one he loves. In this deeply affecting work, he channels the pain and wonder of what it means to live and to be human in a transient world.'
(Winner of 2020 NSW Premier's Literary Award for Poetry - judges' report)

26/07/2020

LK Holt's recent collection 'Birth Plan' is the focus of Sarah Holland-Batt's Poet's Voice column in the Australian this week.

'In defence of difficulty in poetry I would say this: poetry tries, as best it can, to wrestle with our most complex and ineffable emotions, and in order to do so, the poet must forge a language that is equal to the task.

Some poets try to distil what they’re wrestling with into clear lines, but others try to capture the complexity through language itself, and, in some sense, to replicate the act of grappling through the poem.

In reading such poems, the key is to relinquish the expectation that meaning will simply swim into view, and to accept that the poet is inviting you to wrestle, as they have. Such a poem is not an arrow whistling through the air to pierce its target, but rather a bramble or a maze: one which you must get lost in in order to make it out of. Of course, the difficulty’s only worth the effort if there’s something there to be decoded.

The work of this week’s poet, LK Holt, is marked by the best kinds of difficulty.'

The poem must resist the intelligence Almost successfully, the great American modernist poet Wallace Stevens wrote in his poem Man Carrying Thing. In this ode to difficulty, Stevens praises the idea that the poem should include parts not quite perceived of the obvious whole, uncertain particles and....

25/07/2020

We were thrilled to see Melinda Bufton's 'Moxie' out just as COVID hit. If you haven't got a copy yet, please jump on our website or your local bookstore and order up. You won't regret it. Melinda Bufton features in the July Sick Leave reading linked below.

Sick Leave write: 'This month we're rolling out the red carpet and putting undisputed legend Melinda Bufton. She's got a new book out, Moxie, and it rocks. It's about offices, remember those? To help her celebrate we've got an unreal line-up of readers; Ella O'Keefe, Panda Wong and Ainslie Templeton. And just to make it a little sweeter, we're taking down the paywall for this month! Free free vids, four great readers.. come on!! If you can chip in a few $$ to help us continue paying readers, you can do it here: paypal.me/sickleave - if not, no stress.'

https://vimeo.com/showcase/sickleavejuly2020

Join the web’s most supportive community of creators and get high-quality tools for hosting, sharing, and streaming videos in gorgeous HD with no ads.

24/07/2020

Sarah Holland-Batt discusses Toby Fitch's 'Where Only the Sky had Hung Before' in her Poet's Voice column in The Australian.

'Many of Fitch’s poems hinge on mishearings and deliberately misspelled homophones: literary mondegreens that see pass muster rendered as “pass mustard”, lunatic as “lunar tic”, operations as “opera shuns”, ravishingly as “radishingly” and so forth.

'These deliberate hiccups in Fitch’s poems pull you up as you’re reading them; they remind me of the not-quite-human language that bots have learned to speak, which sounds human — until suddenly it doesn’t. Reading Fitch’s poems, you sense language slipping away from its usual meanings, somehow more supple and less stable than usual.'

Depending on your perspective, the moment in 1917 when dadaist artist Marcel Duchamp daubed the signature R. Mutt on a porcelain urinal, gave it the title Fountain and submitted it to an art exhibition in New York was a thrilling, iconoclastic step in the history of avant-garde and conceptual art, o...

05/07/2020

Natalie Harkin and Pam Brown Cuplet readings from the QLD Poetry Festival.

01/07/2020

We're proud to announce that Thom Sullivan's 'Carte Blanche' has won ASAL's 2020 Mary Gilmore Award.

Congratulations to Thom and thanks to ASAL and the judges David McCooey, Jill Jones, and Dan Disney. Also thanks to the Australia Council for the Arts for supporting the publication of 'Carte Blanche'.

'Carte Blanche' was also winner of the Noel Rowe Poetry Award, which we hope to run again this year. Please sign up to our mailing list via our website for details.

04/06/2020

Gabriela Bourke reviews 'Archival-Poetics' by Natalie Harkin.

'Natalie Harkin’s poetry works to decolonise the archive in a way that is distressing, arresting and aesthetic, and tells us that we need to pick up the gauntlet, continue the work and be better. Be better at recognising and rejecting the racism and violence propagated in the spaces we live and work and in our media. Be better at dismantling the systems from which we have profited at the expense of First Nations people. Be better at amplifying Indigenous voices instead of our own. Be better at listening, instead of speaking.'

Archival Poetics by Natalie Harkin Vagabond ISBN 9781925735215 Reviewed by GABRIELA BOURKE It can be tempting to imagine that colonisation is a thing of the past; that posting an infographic on Ins…

31/05/2020

Sarah Holland-Batt reviews Peter Boyle's 'Enfolded in the wings of a great darkness' in The Australian.

'These moments of sharp clarity are counterposed with an at times hallucinatory surrealism, where the poet speaks in the plural, finding a metaphor that moves underground: “in the darkened station / we waited like miners / exhausted / from chipping away / at the light”. Later, he describes “having lost the way / to go down / into the forest / of felled ships / at the edge of the cedar mountain”.

These gorgeous, ruinous images of grief are leavened by moments of intimate and deeply affectionate portraiture, where the poet observes sunlight’s “bright dependable / presence” as it moves “into our rooms / brushing out bodies as we wake”.'

While it was TS Eliot who famously described poetry as not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality, it was the great Portuguese modernist poet Fernando Pessoa, who achieved this escape most fully.

21/05/2020

Mary Gilmore Award shortlist announced. Congrats to Thom Sullivan and all the poets on the shortlist.