Light on the Hill

David Musgrave gets our vote this week for his launch of Puncher & Wattman, a new poetry publisher. Funded with prize money, savings and income from his day job, Musgrave starts off on the front foot with a new title by Nick Riemer "James Stinks (and so does Chuck)". This will be closely followed by titles from Peter Kirkpatrick, John Watson and Simon West. Musgrave says he felt the need for a publisher that "appealed unapologetically to readers of poetry rather than a wider market." Musgrave wisely expects to make most of his sales via the internet (seeing how all the bookshop shelves are choked with political memoir). For more info, just click on the "Light on the Hill" post heading. You get our vote, David.

Meanwhile Louise "what's-poetry-got-to-do-with-it? Adler is continuing to tell us all how clever she is for signing up a clapped out pollie to pen a lot of turgid, narcissistic bile and shamelessly manipulating the media to fill the shelves of every bookshop in the country. I am old enough to remember the days when Melbourne University Press published poetry, but then we poets are something of a liability in the shiny new world envisaged by those seduced by weasel words and the relentless shift of capital from a living culture and community to this faceless, heedless thing called economy.