Sunlight of Ordinary Days

Twelve Poets of the Peter Cowan Writers’ Centre

Sunlight of Ordinary Days is a poetry anthology like no other. It is a record of the creative explorations of twelve accomplished poets under the tutelage of eight esteemed poets, teachers and advocates of literature in Western Australia.

In this short anthology, a range of styles, voices and subject matter will intrigue poetry audiences both inside and outside Australia.

Edited by John Charles Ryan and with a preface by Andrew Taylor, the anthology features the work of Liana Joy Christensen, Cuttlewoman, Gary Colombo de Piazzi, Matthew Hall, Nicola-Jane le Breton, Scott-Patrick Mitchell, Rashida Murphy, Flora Smith, John Ryan himself, Josephine Wilson, Mags Webster and Julie Watts.

The dozen poets are given brief spaces in which to develop something for the reader—a scene, a recollection, an emotion, an idea. You will find yourself pulled into our constellations, just as word bursts produce collective starlight (and sunlight).

BOOK REVIEW
The 12 poets collected here were participants in the PCWC 2011 Advanced Poetry Workshops conducted by such luminaries as Andrew Burke, Lucy Dougan and Dennis Haskell. No Last Supper this, but sound-feast without end, with local poets including Scott-Patrick Mitchell, Flora Smith, Liana Joy Christensen, Josephine Wilson and Gary Colombo De Piazzi sharing word-hoard abroad in dazzling fashion. The range of voices, themes and registers is as expansive as the forms are compact: witness John Charles Ryan's pale husbands cradle infants / cautiously / towards their first saline stings (The Pool).
— William Yeoman, West Australian, 7 October 2012

EDITED BY JOHN CHARLES RYAN
John is a poet and Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Communications and Arts at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Western Australia. He is the author of the books Katoomba Incantation (Cyberwit, 2011), Green Sense (TrueHeart Press, 2012), Two With Nature (poetry, Fremantle Press, 2012), Unbraided Lines (CG Publishers, 2013), Digital Arts (Bloomsbury, 2014, with Cat Hope) and Being With (CG Publishers, 2014). He has been living in Western Australia since 2008.

PREFACE BY ANDREW TAYLOR
Andrew Taylor is the author of more than fifteen books of poetry, including Collected Poems (Salt, UK 2004) and The Unhaunting (Salt, 2009). He is Professor Emeritus at Edith Cowan University and divides his time between Perth and Wiesbaden, Germany.