The Book of Remembrance
Remembering Australian poets from Sydney and New South Wales. These stories are treasured memorials. We publish them to honour a life as well as to inform community of their lives that made them prominent locally, nationally and worldwide.
Editor Adam Aitken is a Sydney-based poet and teacher. His last book was Archipelago (Vagabond Press).
Email address: AAitken@poetrysydney.org
Rob Riel
Rob Riel A piece of us all is missing. Farewell to Rob Riel. Kerri Shying ‘We generally notice light when it is absent’ Rob Riel, Still Life For as Long as You Burn, Five Islands Press (new poets 6) 1999 Rob Riel’s moustache was a wonder, his poetry even more.
Ron Pretty
Ron Pretty 16 October 1940 – 30 June 2023 Ron Pretty was a much loved, much admired, poet, publisher and teacher, and a tireless advocate for the importance of poetry within the Australian culture. He died of pneumonia at his home in Farmborough Heights, south of Wollongong, on 30 June
Willem Tibben
1947 Willem Tibben 2023 Photograph of Willem Tibben. All rights reserved. Over several decades Willem (Bill) Tibben produced four books of poetry: Conscious Moment, Near Myths, In Search of the Simple and Suburban Veneer. Written by Danny Gardner He had wide connections to the poetry community via Kardoorair Press, Armidale
Jill McKeowen
Jill McKeowen (1959 – 2022) Jean Kent Words in quotation marks are from poems in Sunday Morning, Here (Flying Islands, 2022), as is the poem below. It is reprinted with permission from Flying Islands Press. Jill McKeowen (1959 – 2022) was a writer of poetry and essays, and a
John Egan
John Egan Photograph courtesy of Ginninderra Press. All rights reserved. Brenda Eldridge, Ginninderra Press The Light The lighthouse throws warning beams, sweeps the sea with its flashes revolving like a constant planet, pulses from a distant star in galaxies of shipwreck dark. Here is danger and death. Keep well clear,
Robert Adamson
Photograph by Juno Gemes. All rights reserved. Vale, Robert Adamson (1943 – 2022) Devin Johnston, Flood Editions Robert Adamson (17 May 1943–16 December 2022) died today of liver cancer. He is widely recognized as one of our greatest poets, “one of Australia’s national treasures” (as John Ashbery wrote). Adamson
Antigone Kefala
Antigone Kefala (1931 – 2022) Antigone Kefala was a writer of poetry, fiction and memoir. Over the last fifty years from 1973, she published five poetry collections, including The Alien, Thirsty Weather, European Notebook, Absence and Fragments, the last won the 2017 Judith Wright Calanthe Award. She also published three
Adam Aitken is a Sydney-based poet and teacher. His last book was Archipelago (Vagabond Press).
Email: AAitken@poetrysydney.org