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The Office of Literary Endeavours – Sydney Book Launch

16 May

5 Island Press invites you to the launch of this stunning new poetry collection from Mark Roberts, co-editor of Rochford Street Review and the occasional poetry journal P76.

The Office of Literary Endeavours with be launched by Les Wicks; Angela Stretch will be your MC.
Time & Location: 25 May 2025, 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm. Benledi House, 186 Glebe Point Rd, Glebe NSW 2037, Australia.
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This is a free event but please register to assist with planning and catering  https://www. 5islandspress .com/…/ book-launch-the…/form
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If you can’t make the launch you can buy the book from https://www.5islandspress.com/…/the-office-of-literary…
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About The Office of Literary Endeavours
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“This is a book evidencing a life spent in appreciation of poetry, deep observation and participation in ecologies of many kinds. Discomfort is constant but there is succour and reprieve in kin and creative expression. The Office of Literary Endeavours is a wise and reverential book by a gentle and accomplished poet at a high point of their writing life”.
………………………………………………………………–AMANDA JOY
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“The poetry is carefully crafted and elegant. The subject matter wide ranging and richly brought to life within the forms Roberts has chosen. Reading through this collection has been a privilege and a delight”.
………………………………………………………………–LES WICKS
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“The Office of Literary Endeavours is a witty and insightful collection characterised by its lucidity. The strength of these poems lies in their interrogation of migration and colonisation through poignant familial memories that are never sentimental but always elegiac, with their critique of colonisation and account of Irish dispossession. A feature of the collection is the way it deftly navigates different moods, so that alongside the poems of migration and colonisation there are also poems about the landscape, the passion of lovers, old friendships, and favourite films. A sharply observant eye unites these poems into a cohesive manuscript of layered emotions and experiences”.
………………………………………………………………–TINA GIANNOUKOS
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“Roberts lends his deft touch to subjects and places both new and old, and specifically to what must always resonate as essential to the human condition–continuously, from pram to old age. In his shared memories, real and invented, ancient and modern, a jam jar or two might be shot for target practice, deadly snakes slung over wire fences, trains might be caught or missed. Here is subject matter to engage seasoned poetry readers, as well as keen students of Australian literature and cultural history: a lively content able to both re-trace and advance, often simultaneously”.
…………………………………………………………………..–JOHN JENKINS
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“The Office of Literary Endeavours is an excellent collection of poetry that demonstrates the poet’s range, skill, talent, experience and wisdom, along with his willingness to experiment with form (including lines, stanza structures and the shape of the poem) and to engage with crucial contemporary issues (such as Indigenous and non-Indigenous relationships to country) as well as European culture and history (as demonstrated through the sequence of poems inspired by films). The book is engaging, accessible, insightful, entertaining, witty and, at times, playful”.
………………………………………………………………–NATHANAEL O’REILLY

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Redundancy

9 May

‘By Five o’clock’ by Kevin Higgins from The Boy With No Face, Salmon Poetry 2005

 

Yes. I have been made redundant and today is my last day at a company at which I have spent the last 17 years. They say one door closes and another door opens. As Kevin Higgins once wrote:

“A universe of time for nothing but writing!”

Leaving the office this afternoon I will think of Kevin’s poem ‘By Five o’clock’, from his 2005 collection The Boy With No Face (see above). While I suspect I will end up in a better place than Kevin’s character (note: Please contact me for paid writing gigs – reviews, articles commissions etc), Higgins poem is a reminder of the viciousness which lies at the heart of capitalism.

Anyway – I’m looking forward to reading Kevin’s final collection Life Itself available from Salmon Poetry

Tomorrow, perhaps, I will share my own redundancy poem…..

 

 

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Mark Roberts at the Sydney Poet Lounge – 21 May 2025

7 May

I’m excited to be one of the feature poets, along with JR Grogan, at the Sydney Poetry Lounge at the Glebe Hotel ( 63 Bay Street, Glebe, New South Wales) on Wednesday 21 May from 6.30pm. I will be reading from my new collection, The Office of Literary Endeavours (5 Islands Press 2025).

Details

Welcome back to the May 2025 chapter of the Sydney Poetry Lounge, featuring poetry from Mark Roberts, JR Grogan and our incredible open mic! Join us upstairs at The Glebe Hotel for a night filled with powerful spoken word performances and heartfelt poetry.$10 entry, $5 concession, tickets available on the door or via Humanitix. The May SPL Facebook Event 

Mark Roberts

For much of the last four decades, Mark Roberts has been involved in writing, criticism and publishing. In 1982, he established P76 magazine with Adam Aitken and has been involved in small press publishing ever since. In 2011 he set up the on-line journal Rochford Street Review with his wife, Linda Adair, which has recently published its 41st issue; the Review is one of the leading (and long-lasting) independent cultural journals around. Mark’s work has been widely published in journal and magazines both in Australia and internationally. He has also published three collections – The Office of Literary Endeavours (5 Islands Press 2025) is Mark’s third book, after Stepping out of Line (Rochford Street Press 1986) and Concrete Flamingos, (Island Press 2016).
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JR Grogan
John Robert Grogan (aka: JR) is an Irish-Australian poet based in Sydney, Australia. His childhood in Ireland and wanderings since, spawned a love and curiosity for the connectivity of the natural world and the human condition. He has poems published in a number of anthologies and online at: The Madrigal, Blue Bottle Journal, Live Encounters Magazine and From Whispers to Roars literary magazine. He is one quarter of the SPL team & sometimes known as ‘the voice of reason’. Find on Instagram: @jr_grogan.

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Dublin GPO – Easter Poem from ‘The Office of Literary Endeavours’

18 Apr

Easter means different things to different people. For many it a time for deep religious and spiritual contemplation, for others it represents a holiday and lots of chocolate. For the Irish Catholics on my mother’s side of my family it was a time of great solemnity, not just because of the Christian celebration of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, but because it was the anniversary of the 1916 Easter Uprising in Ireland.

In my poem ‘Returns’, which appears in my new collection The Office of Literary Endeavours (5 Islands Press), I write of my return to Ireland, over 150 years after my great grandmother was forced to flee with her family. In the final part of the poem ‘Dublin GPO’ I remember my grandfather. While he never saw Ireland, he grew up with the stories of Irish resistance and the memory of hearing about the Easter Uprising and it’s aftermath stayed with him all his life. Before I read the history of Easter 1916 in books I had already heard his version of events numerous times.

 

The  Office of Literary Endeavours is available from https://www.5islandspress.com/product-page/the-office-of-literary-endeavours-by-mark-roberts

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‘The Office of Literary Endeavours’ cover reveal

21 Mar

I’m excited to reveal the cover of my new collection, The Office of Literary Endeavours, which is in the process of being published by 5 Islands Press. Many thanks to Judith Nangala Crispen for the use of her Lumachrome glass print, Blue Wren and for 5 Islands Press for the overall design. Thanks also to Amanda Joy, John Jenkins, Robbie Coburn and Tina Giannoukos who provided endorsements for the cover.

Stay tuned for presales, publication dates and launch details.

Michael Witts double book launch at the Shop Gallery Sunday 16 March

12 Mar

This coming Sunday I will be doing the honours and formally launching not one but two books by Michael Witts at the wonderful Shop Gallery in Glebe Point Road. I first read Michael’s work in 1982, the year Adam Aitken and I started P76 magazine, when Fling Poetry published his third collection, Dumb Music. More recently I have enjoyed more recent work his has been published in various journals and magazines and we now have the pleasure seeing this new work collected together.

If you are in Sydney this Sunday try and make it to the Shop Gallery to see me launch 28 Sonnets and Some Dualities and. more importantly, hear Michael read from these collections.

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Contract signed with 5 Islands Press for ‘The Office of Literary Endeavours’

22 Feb

Things are getting real. I’ve signed the contract for my third collection, The Office of Literary Endeavours, with 5 Islands Press and, this weekend, I will be going through the final edits. While most of the poems in the collection have been published in various magazines, journals and anthologies over the past decade or so it will be great to see them together in a single collection.

Stay tuned for release and launch dates!

https://www.5islandspress.com/

Four new poems from ‘The Office of Literary Endeavours’ appear in the ‘Lothlorien Poetry Journal’ blog

1 Jan

It was a great feeling to wake up on New Year’s Day to find four poems from my upcoming collection, The Office of Literary Endeavours, published on the the Lothlorien Poetry Journal blog. Many thanks for editor Strider Marcus Jones for publishing ‘cutting the grass’, ‘the other city’, ‘consolidation’ and ‘Northern Stone’.

You can read the poems here:  https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/2024/12/four-poems-by-mark-roberts.html.

Make sure you check out the rest of the site – there is some amazing work there.

 

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