Rhyll McMaster – October 28 2018

World Stroke Day – October 29

Rhyll is an award-winning writer. She worked as a secretary, burns unit nurse, sheep farmer, poetry editor, book reviewer, and manuscripts and film scripts assessor before taking up writing full-time. Rhyll’s poems have been appearing in Australian publications since she was sixteen. A large selection of her work is included in the seminal poetry anthology Australian Poetry Since 1788, and her poems are included in the Best Australian Poems 2010, 2011 and 2012. Rhyll’s other poetry volumes include The Brineshrimp, Washing the Money, Flying the Coop: New and selected poems 1972-1994 and Chemical Bodies: a Diary of Probable Events, 1994-1997. She has also written the novel, Feather Man. Born in Brisbane, Rhyll now lives in Sydney.

On My Empty Feet
William Heinemann Australia, 1993; ISBN 9780855615222
This is a book of voices – voices explaining, recounting, demanding: the radio voice of a suburban Sunday afternoon; the anguished voice of a woman affected by a stroke; the bitter voice of self-realisation; the harsh sound of sobbing and shouts of black laughter. This book can be read like a novel, its characters alive and demanding your attention, their stories vivid and awfully familiar. McMaster has a sure ear for the rhythms of everyday speech and a sharp eye for detail. This book dramatically extends her range of subject and emotion. Poems from this selection formed the basis of a radio play of the same name, broadcast twice by the ABC.

Late Night Shopping
Brandl & Schlesinger
These are poems that reflect many aspects of the human condition and the individual, from poems about love and death, the family, science, the natural world and historical figures such as Ned Kelly and Charles Darwin. Her sequence on Ned Kelly (originally published in an illustrated limited edition) is reproduced here for a wider readership.
‘This is poetry not for lyrically-minded impulse-shoppers, but for those prepared to think and re-think where and what we are.’ – Bruce Dawe
‘Enriched by insights from science and a formidable grasp of language, McMaster reveals herself here as one of our most serious poets.’ – Geoffrey Lehmann