Michael Byrne – July 29 2018

Michael is a poet, community journalist, reviewer, anthologist and freelance poetry tutor. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from the Australian National University and a Masters in Journalism from the University of Wollongong. Michael’s other poetry collections include Southbound and Estuary at Dusk: Poems 1995–2000. His poetry has featured in literary journals such as Quadrant and Voiceworks; in anthologies such as The Best Australian Poetry 2009 and The Indigo Book of Australian Prose Poems; on community radio programs such as Soundprint and Words Apart; and at events such as Floriade, the ANU Poets Luncheon and Verse in the Vines. Michael has edited The Indigo Book of Australian Prose Poems and On Common Water. He contributed the poems ‘Voices’ and ‘Mania’ to the 2016 collection, The lived experience: poetry featuring mental health consumers.

A Man of Emails
Ginninderra Press, 2010; ISBN 9781740276030
A Man of Emails follows on from Michael Byrne’s previous collection Southbound. Again, there is the balance between his painterly imagism and his quirky use of traditional form. With technical flair and flamboyancy, Byrne explores matters relating to his history, environment and psyche, including the poem My First Lithium: “I was twenty-one, and high and mighty. / I stomped to my psychiatrist, angry. / …. He turfed me out, gave me water and a bitter pill / to swallow, like the diagnosis, a habit I had to keep. / Something I never had before, but needed, like sleep….”
‘A Man of Emails is persuasively, even riskily autobiographical. There are things to be learned from it.’ – Geoff Page

New and Selected Poems
Ginninderra Press, 2014; ISBN 9781740278843
Michael Byrne’s New & Selected Poems incorporates poems written from 1995 to 2010. The first poem in the collection, ‘Volutions’, was written when Byrne was seventeen. The latest poem, ‘Theatre’, was written when he was thirty-two. New & Selected Poems takes six poems from his early collection Estuary at Dusk: Poems 1995-2000 as well as twenty poems and eight poems respectively from his award-winning collections Southbound and A Man of Emails. There are also a number of new poems in the collection. New & Selected Poems encompasses the full arc of Byrne’s development, from promising teenage poet to an accomplished poet in his thirties.