Join us in celebrating the launch of What We Carry – Poetry on Childbearing. At this exclusive NSW launch, contributing poets will read live from this remarkable collection published by Recent Work Press.

What We Carry brings together the voices of more than 60 contemporary Australian poets to provide accounts of childbearing that are both lyrical and embodied. Featuring diverse voices and perspectives on experiences of infertility, conception, termination, loss, pregnancy, birth and the early postpartum period, this collection illuminates the endlessly different ways the potential to carry life is experienced. The poems invite you to share incredibly personal stories – some humuorous, some sincere, some full of elation and love, others frustration or despair. They provide powerful insights into the potential for childbearing experiences to shape us, change the trajectories of our lives, and teach us about what it means to be human. For after all, all of us were carried, at the beginning.

Edited by Ella Kurz, Simone King and Claire Delahunty

Mark Tredinnick is a celebrated Australian poet and essayist. His many books include The Blue Plateau, Almost Everything I Know, Fire Diary and Bluewren Cantos. His most recent books of poetry are A Gathered Distance (2020) and Walking Underwater (2021). A Beginner’s Guide appears in 2022. Mark is the father of five children. He lives, writes and teaches in he Southern Highlands of NSW. 

Magdalena Ball is a novelist, poet, reviewer interviewer and the Managing Editor of Compulsive Reader (www.compulsivereader.com). She has been widely published in literary journals, anthologies, and online, and is the author of several published books of poetry and fiction, including, most recently High Wire Step (Flying Island Press, 2018), and Unreliable Narratives (Girls on Key Press, 2019).

Gillian Swain is a poet from Lake Macquarie, living in East Maitland NSW. Gillian’s first poetry collection is My Skin its own Sky (Flying Islands Press 2019). She has poems published in various anthologies and most recently in the literary journal Burrow (Old Water Rat Publishing, Vol 1 & 2). She is the curator of all things poetry (and other events) for the Indie Writers Festival, ‘IF Maitland’.

Anne Casey is an award-winning Irish poet/writer and scholarship PhD researcher living in Australia. Journalist, magazine editor, legal author and media communications director for 30 years, she is the author of two collections, with two books forthcoming in 2021. Her work is widely published internationally, ranking in The Irish Times’ Most Read. 

Jodi Vial lives and writes on Awabakal land with her husband and three daughters. She is a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Newcastle with a focus on the intersection of literature, landscape and history. Her work was published by Spineless Wonders in the anthology Landmarks in 2016. She was awarded first prize in the University of Newcastle’s 2018 student art prize for her short story cycle, Lives of Girls and Women.

Simone King is a poet and editor from Worimi country, currently living on Wurundjeri land. Simone’s words have been published in poetry anthologies, online publications and journals including Rabbit and Plumwood Mountain. Simone received a prize in the 2018 Australian Grieve Writing Competition, the 2019 June Shenfield Poetry Award (highly commended) and the 2020 Venie Holmgren Environmental Poetry Prize (commended).

Ella Kurz is a midwife, researcher, feminist and writer living on the border of Ngunnawal and Ngarigo lands. She developed the term ‘parturescence’ in her PhD which refers to the opportunities for transformation made possible through childbirth. She is the author of the children’s book, My Mother is a Midwife (Library for All, 2019). Her favourite things are walking in the bush, her children and poems that clutch at her heart.