Writing and Publications ︎ 2026
AUP New Poets 12
︎ Available in Melbourne from Brunswick Bound ︎ and in Aotearoa from your local independent bookshop
‘AUP New Poets 12 carries on the high standard set by the series and gives a fuller canvas to three young poets who I know we will read much more from in the years to come. Open-hearted, funny and extremely current, Anuja Mitra, Loretta Riach and Zephyr Zhang all write engrossing collections that deliver on the promise of their appearances in local and international journals.’
— Francis Cooke
‘Riach’s Possum, on the other hand,wrestles with trying to make a new home after moving to Naarm, and how building an artistic life in the current climate can feel like beating a dead animal. In ‘Retired from Art, New Career in Sandwiches’:
Everything is meaningful
even when the meaning is a terrible let-down.
I want to make something out of this,
even when it is hard
and I feel far away from anything gentle.
…
Every poem has a possum inside of it
and I have to poke it with a stick
to make sure it’s really dead.
— Melanie Kwang, Kete Books