#StayHappening
Thu, 08 Oct, 2026 at 06:00 pm UTC+11:00

Book launch | Askew by Andy Jackson

  • Readings Emporium, Lvl 1, Emporium Melbourne, 287 Lonsdale St, Melbourne · Melbourne
Giramondo Publishing Publisher / Host Giramondo Publishing
Share
Book launch | Askew by Andy Jackson
Advertisement
You're invited to the launch of Askew, Andy Jackson’s first book since winning the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry with Human Looking in 2021.
Andy will be joined at Readings Emporium by Tim Loveday, Angela Costi and Rachael Wenona Guy, who will each read a poem from Askew and a poem of their own.
This event is free, but RSVP is essential: https://www.readings.com.au/events/poetry-launch-askew-by-andy-jackson
-----
Praise for Askew:
‘Andy Jackson’s Askew is ambitious and emotionally attuned, as it invigorates form around fragment and the broken, syntax around breath and earth, echo and connection around other voices, image around the damaged body and the world in extremis. As the poems unwind through the said, the sung, the remembered and the dreamt, they tag each other and pass along challenges and difficult questions, confront grief and anger, and in so doing, reveal how grace, courage and love are vital imperatives now. In this cathartic, generous and impassioned book, Jackson powerfully reminds us what poetry can do as the world trembles.’
– Jill Jones
‘Original and beautiful, exceptional and radical, Askew proposes collaboration as fundamental to present-day questioning. Poets walk with composers with musicians with visual artists, sonnets with erasures with centos with ‘aftersongs’ (and other dazzling Andy Jackson-invented forms), sharing fresh conversations about empathy and compassion, crises and ecologies, kinship and masculinity, disability and embodiment. In these poems coexist learning and ‘unlearning’, acceptance and resistance, clarity and opacity, fragility and resilience. Tender and bold, cloud-‘soften[ed]’ and bright, playful and serious, intimate and expansive, they teach us to hold ‘care’ and ‘war’, ‘ghost notes’ and ‘cacophon[y]’, and remind us that we can ‘look[…] the other way’ or look straight at the ‘queer’ and ‘strange’. As its cover suggests, Askew is a book of brilliant interconnectedness, and Andy Jackson its marvellous loomsman.’
– Stuart Barnes
Learn more: https://giramondopublishing.com/books/andy-jackson-askew/
Advertisement

Event venue

Readings Emporium, Lvl 1, Emporium Melbourne, 287 Lonsdale St, Melbourne, Australia

Tickets
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups — all the happenings, one place.

Discover more events by tag

Ask AI if this event suits you

Keep the plans coming

More events in Melbourne

Giselle

Thu, 08 Oct at 07:30 pm Palais Theatre

Melbourne is happening.

See everything else that’s on — concerts, markets, comedy and more.