Books by Jo Bell

The South West Family Life Centre was the organisation teachingthe Billings Ovulation Method, a great way to observe, utilise andcontrol our fertility naturally, really spread all over the BunburyDiocese through the 1980's. It really helped many people understand,utilize and control their family life.Sister Kostka and Kath Fenton had started teaching this programmein Bunbury. Then we were so wonderfully provided with informationand support by Doctors John and Evelyn Billings, Kath Smyth fromMelbourne, and Sister Anne Wood from Sydney that it took off allaround the Diocese like a bushfi re when these inspiring people cameover to WA. These are the people on the front cover.Because so many folks became part of the South West FamilyLife Centre, I felt the need to create a story of that bush-fi re, withThanksgiving to God and to all those folks who became infl amed.May there still be goodness coming from their hearts and minds forthe next generation.

Love, sex, boats and friendship. And yet Jo Bell's second poetry collection, Kith, is about so much more, as these bold and generous poems interweave bigger questions of place, identity and community and what these mean to us, here and now. Delighting in the belting, beautiful turn-of-phrase, Jo Bell's poems are lyrical and joyous, but always precise and clear as birdsong. They take us the long way home, plot histories along the route of backwaters, and are occasionally diverted for a roll in the hay; hearts are broken and boats are dry-docked. There will be tears, but there will also be love, safe harbours, and the company of wise and faithful kith. Delighting in the belting, beautiful turn-of-phrase, Jo Bell's poems are lyrical and joyous, but always precise and clear as birdsong. They take us the long way home, plot histories along the route of backwaters, and are occasionally diverted for a roll in the hay; hearts are broken and boats are dry-docked. There will be tears, but there will also be love, safe harbours, and the company of wise and faithful kith. Praise for Jo Bell: 'Witty, sexy and deft, Jo Bell's verse has an easy charm that hides a sometimes painful honesty. There is melancholy as well as mischief here, and a real poets' eye and ear for the foibles of being human. Kith is a wonderful collection.' - Stuart Maconie 'Jo Bell is one of the most exciting poets now writing and no time is wasted in the company of her work.' - Carol Ann Duffy 'Any time you are tempted to think that humour in poetry means 'light verse', turn to Jo Bell. You will find lightness, certainly, but in the sense of deftness, a light touch aimed at something lit up, suddenly, close to the heart.' - Philip Gross