Poetry Sydney is an independent literary organisation committed to a presence for poetry in our culture.

The Book of Remembrance
Photograph: Jann Harry (J.S. Harry) at her book launch of Not finding Wittgenstein: Peter Henry Lepus Poems, Giramondo Publishing Company, 12 June 2007. Photographed by Jenni Nixon, at Gleebooks.

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

Photograph: Rudi Krausmann in Sydney by Pam Brown, 1982.

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.

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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

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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

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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

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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,

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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

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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

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Adam Aitken is a Sydney-based poet and teacher. His last book was Archipelago (Vagabond Press). 
Email: AAitken@poetrysydney.org