Rob Thomas

Great poems move different people in different ways. Nobel-poet Wisława Szymborska’s pieces trace a reliable arc from simple seeds, through surprise development, and land in the subtle neighbourhood of the sublime.

Rolli’s poetic voice is often likened to e.e. cummings’ light verse, chiefly in how he toys with syntax and nonsense. But there’s a keen sardonic edge, too — think of Shel Silverstein and Hilaire Belloc.

Henry Doyle’s No Shelter is a plainspoken and authentic record of the grinding and unacknowledged quotidian battle with day labour, despair and displacement.

Fawn Parker ridicules the academy and unchecked privilege. She also takes more than a few shots at poisonous celebrities along the way. The result is a truly glorious mash up of the academia of a novel like Lucky Jim and the medieval sand trap from the film The Duel.