Have we missed some best new poetry? Publishers, please send your advance book lists to our reviews and our editor inbox and we’ll include you next time!
New poetry: quick links
As If I’m Really There, Emilie Collyer – 1 September, new poetry
This second collection digs deeply into Emilie Collyer’s feminist interest in the place of the body: what it feels like to have one, how bodies are gendered, assessed, analysed and valued, how the body of an artist and a body of creative work is forged.
How to Emerge, Jill Jones – 1 September, new poetry
This collection is filled with visions and ghosts, doubles and shadows. It also explores the living and damaged body, as it dances with humans, birds, animals, leaves, the weather, digital assemblage, sound and song, the elements and the planet.
DOGHOUSE, Holly Friedlander Liddicoat – 1 September, new poetry
DOGHOUSE is a map of 20-something millennial Sydney, drawn with sharp lines and a rough hand. Against the backdrop of climate disaster, lockdowns, Black Summer, and floods, these poems punch down backstreets, trying to keep alive.
Too Much Light, Laurence Levy-Atkinson – 1 September, new poetry
Born from lived experience, Too Much Night was written as a response to Laurence Levy-Atkinson’s collapse into and return from the depths of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, something he was unaware he had been suffering his entire life and whose eventual diagnosis was nothing short of a revelation.
Lithosphere, Ben Walter – 1 September
Compelling and strange, Ben Walter’s debut poetry collection explores our eccentric connections to the natural world – the flora and fauna, water and wind that burst through the valleys and peaks of the lithosphere, the hard, rocky crust of the Earth that makes all life possible.
màthair beinn, Eartha Davis – 1 September, new poetry
This debut collection is an ode to healing and gentleness. It rustles with return: a return to body, to wildness, to the steadily beating heart of presence.
The Abandoned Room, Paul Carter – 1 September, new poetry
The Abandoned Room is a diary of historical and personal homelessness. The title refers to Der Verlassene Raum, a Kristallnacht memorial located in central Berlin, whose bronze table and two chairs point to ‘the irretrievable losses that occurred when a people, their way of life and their culture went missing’.
The Wallace Line: A Poem, Jennifer MacKenzie – 1 September, no poetry
The Wallace Line: A Poem honours co-existence, a world of merging borders, where the oud can resonate along with the bird of paradise, the blue pigment in a Titian painting with the sound of a Javanese gamelan in moonlight.
Grief: Five sequences, Cassandra Atherton, Jen Webb, Oz Hardwick, Paul Hetherington, Paul Munden – 1 September
In this volume of prose poetry, five poets approach grief in different ways; the emotion sometimes recognisable, sometimes disguised. Their works grieve for those who are gone while they traverse the idea of the abiding presence of loss.
Tide of Tides: Poems 2011-2024, Paolo Totaro – 1 September
In the 13 years since his Collected Poems, Paolo Totaro has written as much poetry as he did in the sixty preceding years. This new book collates that remarkable yield.
All Rage Blaze Light, Anna Jacobson – 2 September, new poetry
All Rage Blaze Light is Anna Jacobson’s third illustrated poetry collection is for anyone who’s ever needed therapy from their therapy.
Poems & Prayers, Matthew McConaughey – 16 September, new poetry
From the Academy-winning actor, a collection of personal poetry and prayers for finding purpose, hope, and satisfaction in a rapidly changing world.
Gold Digger, Lisa Collyer –22 September
Gold Digger challenges the enduring myths of domesticity by portraying women as breadwinners, unearthing the realities of labour, aspiration and social mobility. Lisa Collyer reveals how women’s work – often overlooked or undervalued – has always been present, from the kitchen to the corridors of power. Motifs of unfair play and erasure echo throughout, reaching even the highest tiers of government, including Parliament House
Also on ArtsHub:
Best new fiction books coming September 2025
Tenderfoot, Toni Jordan – 26 August
A novel about coming of age in 1970s Australia: Andie Tanner’s world is small; her mum is complicated, but she adores her dad and the kennel of racing greyhounds that live under their house. Andie is a serious girl with plans: finish school with her friends, then apprentice to her father until she can become a greyhound trainer, with dogs of her very own.
The Watervale Ladies’ Writing and Firefighting Society, Mette Menzies – 26 August
It’s never too late to start over. This is a feelgood novel, where four very different women are thrown together in a creative writing course in the library of a small country town. Read more …
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