klward

I am delighted beyond measure to announce that my new collection of poetry and short prose is now available from P'rea Press.



The Macabre Modern and Other Morbidities contains my reworking of the medieval danse macabre for the new millennium, my detailed essay on the subject, the fable "The Loquacious Cadaver" and a cortege of poems both reprinted and appearing for the first time. The former include the Australian Shadows award winner “Revenants of the Antipodes”.

The Macabre Modern, as it came to be called (thanks to Mark Calderwood), is a passion project of long-standing. If, in the fourteenth century, Death came calling personally on the Pope, the Emperor, the farmer and the monk, should It not also attend the C.E.O. and party politician, the activist and the life coach? After all, Death hasn't gone anywhere, just assumed new forms, that it was an intriguing challenge for me to capture in the illustrations.

Medieval historian Dr Gillian Polack and renowned literary scholar S. T. Joshi were kind enough to provide me with foreword and afterword respectively, greatly enhancing the depth of the book.

Thanks to editor Danny Lovecraft, compositor David E. Schultz and cover designer David Schrembri, the hardback and paperback are both decidedly handsome. The official launch takes place on the 25th of August, for which I've cooked up some surprises that will hopefully be available as videos shortly thereafter. So, whistle past the graveyard and get on your party shoes, for "how you live is how you dance"!