Books published by Vagabond Press

"What is so arresting here is the casual everydayness that welcomes strangeness as the most matter of fact part of reality. Typical of the book's achievement, the poem feels as much in the wife's voice as the husband's. There is nothing forced or artificial going on. The poem is universalwithout being in any way universalising; the voice speaking trusts the power of what one sees and feels to carry the poem. Yotsumoto's achievement appears in the ease with which the everyday, the earthy, the dream-like, and the bizarrely imagined all glide into each other, are there with a careful equality. The calm of the poem, the tone of everyday realism with no craving for effect, makes the image of the last two lines so startling: 'silence' this 'strange animal' brought so lovingly back from the grave.Part of what is so attractive in Yotsumoto's poetry is that it bypasses the supposed dichotomy between experimental and traditional poetry, or (the same idea posed more accurately) the false choice of much contemporary North American and Australian poetry between an abstract/cerebral poetry that flees sentimentality by avoiding engagement with the world (L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry at its extreme) and poetry as an all too prosaic description of the outside world, often in the form of tedious autobiographic recount. Yotsumoto's poetry (and Tanikawa's even more powerfully) demonstrate how surprise, innovation and true poetic experimentation serve to bring us closer to the everyday world - not to flee from it." -Cordite Poetry ReviewYasuhiro Yotsumoto was born in Osaka, Japan in 1959 and grew up mostly in Hiroshima. His first collection of poetry was 'A Laughing Bug' in 1991. Since then 7 collections of his poetry have been published, including 'Muddy Calender' (coauthored with Inuo Taguchi, 2008), 'Starboard of My Wife' (2006), 'Golden Hour' (2004). His awards include the Hagiwara Sakutaro Award and his poems have been translated into more than 10 languages. His latest translations into Japanese include 'Kid' by Simon Armitage.

'Eelahroo (Long Ago) Nyah (Looking) Möbö-Möbö (Future)' is the most recent collection from Australia's foremost experimental and political poet and one of the best known contemporary Aboriginal Australian writers, Lionel G. Fogarty."Sometimes angry, defiant, sometimes sad, and always in love with people and country, Lionel Fogarty is cosmically off the scales, holds multitudes, is wise, riddling, and funny too. Like all romantics the word is energy, wilderness and invention, but the modern is where he's going. If these poems were dice, they're all loaded. There's no voice comes close to this intensity. And if you want something predictable and 'correct' (in terms of language and rhetoric) go elsewhere. 'Here comes the tranquility incarnation.'" -Adam Aitken"Once again Lionel Fogarty presents a collection of poems unique in the telling. From bar room brawls to constitutional referendums, past loves and hopes for the future, these new poems obliterate the landscape, holding the reader in a place of Aboriginal contemplation." -Ali Cobby Eckermann

Shortlisted for the 2014 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Indigenous Writing. Lionel Fogarty is Australia's foremost experimental and political poet. MOGWIE-IDAN: Stories of the land brings together work from across Fogarty's career, including poems from the 2012 Scanlon Award-winning Connection Requital, which the judges noted 'demands that you move out of your comfort zone and encounter, grapple with, and be open to, the power of his words and the way they are placed on the page and the way their rhythms embody the knotty issues you are being pressed to countenance, accommodate and if possible resolve - or at least come to terms with somewhere in your psyche. This is no easy ride - and Fogarty takes no prisoners.'MOGWIE-IDAN: Stories of the land showcases the intelligence of the Aboriginal grassroots struggle in contemporary Australia, laying open the realness of Lionel Fogarty's Murri mission poetry. The Aboriginal struggle in Australia is not over, but here handed to the next generations to promote their strength. Biame guide! Biame bless!'A most prolific Aboriginal poet, Lionel Fogarty continues to write with powerful passion about issues close to his heart: injustice, land rights, identity, language, black deaths in custody and the ongoing consequences of colonization. Lionel's writing focuses on his need to face a future without oppression and he demonstrates a desire to pass on his own knowledge and experience through the written word.' Anita Heiss

In "Love dreaming & other poems" Cobby Eckermann bears witness to a deep commitment to her traditional kin, culture and language as she tells the story of her search for her family on the traditional Yankunytjatjara and Kokatha lands in the north west of South Australia. At the same time, she lays bare the ongoing effects of governmental policy and paternalism on Australia's indigenous peoples. Engaging with events around Alice Springs, these poems give firsthand witness to the 2007 Northern Territory Emergency Response by the Federal Government, commonly known as The Intervention, and its ongoing effects on regional and remote Indigenous communities. These poems lay open the complexity of the internal conflict felt among Aboriginal people today, as they constantly need to adjust to contemporary Australia.Cobby Eckermann notes, 'My times in the desert are my happiest, and the soft blanket felt when my traditional language is spoken around me, is a feeling of pure love.' This is a collection by one of Indigenous Australian poetry's most vital new voices, sung with two eyes wide open to the present reality without fear or prejudice, with an overflowing love and care for the future."These are the offerings of a writer who has journeyed with great determination through apparently irretrievable loss, through chaos, disintegration and desolation, who has harvested the gifts of insight and emotional and spiritual intelligence and compassion, and who now reveals these insights to the eyes and ears of others through lucid images and punchy language." Terry WhitebeachAli Cobby Eckermann has enjoyed huge success with her first collection of poetry little bit long time (Australian Poetry Centre, 2010) and Kami (Vagabond Press, 2010). Her poetry reflects her journey to reconnect with her Yankunytjatjara / Kokatha family. Her first verse novel His Father's Eyes was published by Oxford University Press in 2011. Her second verse novel Ruby Moonlight won the inaugural kuril dhagun National Manuscript Editing Award and will be published by Magabala Books in 2012. She established an Aboriginal Writers Retreat at her home in Koolunga, and advocates strongly for grassroots Aboriginal voices to be heard through literature. She has lived most of her adult life in Australia's Northern Territory.