The 2023 South Coast Writers Centre poetry anthology 34-37 Degrees South – the Country Edition – was launched in Cobargo in South East NSW (about 5 hours south of Sydney) on Sunday 12 November with readings from over a dozen of the featured poets. 

This is the second annual anthology of poetry from members of the South Coast Writers Centre. (the 2022 edition is here)

The anthology comprises thirty unique perspectives, ranging from the personal and the intimate to the grand; poems about trauma, change and hope, and some wry humour too.

The collection is divided into three chapters. ‘You Are Here’ gathers poems with local concerns: the passing of two beloved chickens, swimming in the Murrumbidgee River at Wagga Wagga or a salutary re-take on Dorothea Mackellar’s I Love a Sunburnt Country. The poems in ‘Voyages’ explore international concerns: returning to a graveyard in Silesia, learning Spanish at a picnic or remembering a garden in Tokyo. The final chapter, ‘Inland Empires’, explores more personal issues: loss, transitions and the body itself as a territory marked by signs and experience.

You can buy your copy of the anthology through the SCWC shop, (all sales go to support the work of the centre) or read or download online for free. You can also listen to the poets reading their works and talking about the writing of these wonderful fresh poems. 

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Image: Artwork is from the wonderful Queensland multi-disciplinary artist and muralist Ash Taylor – Detail of a mural now beautifying the wall of the Good Drop Liquor Emporium (they also do eggs and milk) Wentworth St, Port Kembla.

For music this morning, here’s Modern Country (Youtube) from US guitariste and super-picker William Tyler.