Flute of Milk

Susan Fealy

Flute of Milk is Susan Fealy’s first full-length collection of poems after years of publication in Australian and US journals and anthologies including Australian Book Review, The Best Australian Poems 2009, 2010 and 2013 (Black Inc.), Contemporary Australian Feminist Poetry (Hunter, 2016), Poetry (Chicago), and Villanelles (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets, 2012).

The collection is in two parts, with each one interrogating love, loss, gender and aesthetics. The poems refract these themes through personal experience, as well as through a broader cultural lens. Some of these works are direct responses to the act of reading literature. The hallmark of this collection is precision with language: these works are always present and vivid.

AWARDS

Won - 2018 NSW Society of Women Writers Book Award (Poetry)

Won - 2017 Wesley Michel Wright Prize 

Shortlisted - 2018 Mary Gilmore Award

Shortlisted - 2018 NSW Society of Women Writers Book Awards

Praise for Flute of Milk: 

An accomplished and impressive book of poems.

ALEX SKOVRON

Melbourne-based Susan Fealy is a subtle, surprising poet with an acute visual sense and exquisite ear for tone and texture.

THE WEST AUSTRALIAN

 

Her language and structures spring constant surprises on readers, deranging the familiar and inviting them to take stock of preconceptions —to see and welcome the surprising nature of existence apprehended by the senses and expressed in ways that urge reconsideration of language itself.

MICHAEL SHARKEY, AUSTRALIAN POETRY

 

Whether redescribing a Vermeer painting in ‘Made in Delft’ or compressing environmental ages into brief stanzas in ‘Lake Mungo,’ Fealy handles her material with extraordinary sensitivity. Beautifully poised around moments of art and place, Fealy’s poems evince an exceptional command of lineation and cadence.

THE 2017 WESLEY MICHEL WRIGHT JUDGES' REPORT

 

It can be asked when reading any poem, what is it that I am in search of? For many it will be meaning; for some it will be meaning and literary form. Fealy’s poems have an abundance of both.

ANNETTE COUCH, TRANSNATIONAL LITERATURE

 

'A Poem,' Australian poet Susan Fealy tells us, 'is close / to a musical instrument. / It’s a place / to leave your fingers / and your lips.' Flute of Milk is full of other observations that are equally delicate and deft, corporeal and purely magical.

DAVID STARKEY, SANTA BARBARA INDEPENDENT

 

Book details

PUBLICATION DATE: February 2017
FORMAT: Paperback
EXTENT: 100 pages
SIZE: 210 x 140 mm
ISBN: 9781742589398
RIGHTS: World rights
CATEGORY: Award Highlights, Poetry, Susan Fealy, UWAP Poetry,