Paper Bark Press
Devin Johnson
American Poet, Devin Johnson poet, poetry editor and publisher shares with Robert Adamson the influence and friendship of the great American poet elders Robert Duncan and Robert Creeley. It is with great pleasure that Paper Bark Press/Fine Art Publishing welcomes Devin Johnston to The Sydney Writers Festival 2002 where his new collection of poems Telepathy will be released in
Australia.
On Telepathy, Forrest Gander wrote: "Reading this remarkable book, we take a journey that alters our perception and so remaps our lives." Based in St Louis, Devin Johnston is co-editor of poetry publisher, Flood Editions, and is a former poetry editor of the Chicago Review.
Robert Adamson
Robert Adamson writes of his connection with American poetry: 'I have been actively promoting American poetry in Australia now for morethan three decades. When people ask me why I refer them to a line Leonard Cohen wrote about the USA- 'It's the cradle of the best and the worse.' We hear so much about the horror such a powerful country can engender: it's precisely because terrible things come from America, that its poets there have to be so good. It was Bob Dylan not Banjo Patterson who inspired me to write poetry about living inAustralia. Robert Creeley told me my accent was like
music so I stoppedtrying to write like Bob Dylan and began to score the sound of our speech in my poetry..
Robert Adamson met Allen Ginsberg when they were on the same reading at the Adelaide Festival's Writer's Week in 1972. Since then he has been publishing and actively promoting American poets in Australia. Adamson was instrumental in organising tours by both Robert Duncan and Robert Creeley to Australia in the 1970s. Through his publishing ventures he has published poets as varied as W.S.Merwin, Denise Levertov, Robert Creeley, Philip Levine, Galway Kinnell, Robert Duncan, Michael Palmer, Michael McClure, James Tate, Susan Howe, Norma Cole and Susan M.Schultz. Adamson's poetry has also been published widely in the USA in American literary magazines including The Southern Review, The Chicago Review , Sulfur, Antipodes, Credences, The Atlanta Review, The Kenyon Review and Poetry Chicago.
Martin Harrison
Martin Harrison's latest book, Summer, contains a number of poems with
American settings, not least three Letters from America mainly concerned with the environment and with the state of contemporary art and literature. Right from the start, Martin Harrison's poetry has had a link with what the Americans were doing – whether in response to the New York school in the limited editions of his poetry which appeared in the UK in the early 70s or whether it is to with what some reviewers point to as the subtle influence of American modernists like Wallace Stevens on his work.
Geraldine McKenzie
Poems from Geraldine McKenzie highly anticipitated first collection of poems, Duty, have beem as widely published in USA, as they have been in Australian. This is quite unusual for an Australian poet. Geraldine Mackenzie poems has been published cutting edge literary journals such as Catalyst 2, Hambone USA , LX9 USA, Poetry New York, and Samizdat USA.
As Charles Berstein says " Hear Ye! Hear Ye! Geraldine McKenzie is entering the hall of language mirrors. Duty calls and Then some."
Paper Bark Press is delighted to announce
the Australian release of Telepathy by Devin Johnson at the Sydney
Writer's Festival 2002 and to celebrate their other recent poetry publications,
Summer by Martin Harrison, Duty by Geraldine McKenzie and
Mulberry Leaves by Robert Adamson.
Paper Bark Press's new website will be launched soon. Until then, please
direct all enquiries to Juno Jemes at: JunoGemes.pbp@bigpond.com
