The Blue Plateau is out this June, and to celebrate its launch Macquarie University is hosting an evening of readings and conversation under the title “The Poetry and Politics of Place”. The event happens on 16 June in the MQU Art Gallery. Deborah Bird Rose, anthropologist, lyric essayist, ecologist and friend, will draw out some of the art and ideas that inform the book; then Peter Boyle and I will read—he some poems; I, some pieces from my new book, and perhaps a few poems, too.

We’re planning an In Conversation at Gleebooks in early July and a book launch in the Blue Mountains; I’m also going to give a series of readings at a number of Berkelouw Bookstores in the months ahead. But come along on Bloom’s day, if you can, when the book, so long in the conception and gestation and birth, is named and given up to the world.