Watch this Space

Description

Watch this Space combines poetry and photography to explore three aspects of our experience of space. First, ‘Place Space’ explores the natural spaces we inhabit in the succession of moments and seasons that are our lives. ‘Self Space’ explores the paradoxical, sometimes strange, experience of the space of Self; of the who that is ‘I’ — with its questions of identity, body, ageing, and dying. Finally, ‘Watch this Space’ explores the non-dual dimension of Space itself through differing perspectives of the mystery of silence, stillness, emptiness, no-thingness, & love. These three Spaces move with and into one another like waves on water. The photographs complement the poems by striking resonances between image and text, sound and silence, form and the Formless.

Like all lyric poetry, Watch this Space speaks out of a solitude to a solitude. It is a collection of spacious images and poems for slow reading, contemplation, the slowing-down of breath and heartbeat—opening a still space for resonance and associations, a space for mood and meanings to form. ‘What fun, every / moment something slides smoothly / out of nothing’ (from ‘Nine Wu-wei for the Old Guy’).

‘Peter Lach-Newinsky’s poetry is rich with questions that reach deeply into the heart of human sentience: who are we under our masks, what is the meaning of experience, how do we navigate spirit and body, life and death? This is poetry that vigorously interrogates the bargains we make with ourselves and our truths. His language is energetic and luminous, his observations keen and illuminating. An honest, profound, and deeply rewarding book.’ —Judith Beveridge

‘Peter Lach-Newinsky’s poems have the poise of a bird silently winging its way across the vast space of the sky. Exploring what it means to be, they arise from a deeply thought and deeply felt contemplation of the world. They reward us with stillness and wonder.’ —Mike Ladd

Peter Lach-Newinsky is the author of five published poetry books and three poetry chapbooks. He has won the Varuna-Picaro Publishing Prize; the Melbourne Poets Union International Poetry Prize, twice; the Vera Newsom Poetry Prize; and has been twice shortlisted in the Newcastle Poetry Prize. He runs a twenty-acre permaculture farm with 120 heritage apple trees near Bundanoon, on Gundungurra country in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales.  He blogs at memengineering (peterlachnewinsky.wordpress.com) and his translations from the German can be found at Passing on the Flame (peterln.wordpress.com).

Product details
ISBN: 978-0-6459294-3-0
Published: 1 December 2024
Pages: 110
Cover: paperback
Weight: 482 grams
Dimensions: 200mm (w) x 250mm (h) x 9mm thick
Printed & bound in Australia

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Watch this Space sample pages