A milestone.   The first book to be published by Pitt Street Poetry is available from today.

Consistent with our plan to publish reprints of classic Australian poetry as well as a selective new list, we are delighted to advise that our initial offering is a reprint of John Foulcher’s first collection Light Pressure, originally published by Angus & Robertson in 1983 at the time Les Murray was the poetry editor at that distinguished Australian firm.

In its day Light Pressure was a national bestseller and reprinted a number of times – as unusual at that time for a poetry book as it is today!  Several of the poems in its pages have been widely anthologised and were used for years as set texts for final year English examinations across the country.  More importantly, they have become a memorable part of the literary landscape for the baby boomer generation.  Despite this, as is so often the case with Australian poetry, the book has been out of print for over 25 years.

Pitt Street Poetry is very pleased to make Light Pressure available once again to a new generation of Australian poetry enthusiasts – in a pocket format and at a very reasonable price.  In keeping with our philosophy of using a mix of traditional and contemporary technologies, it is also available for download as an e-book in both the e-pub and mobi formats, which means it can be read on virtually any popular e-book reader, including the Kindle, the iPad (or iPhone) and the Sony reader.

Light Pressure has been reprinted using the latest print-on-demand techniques.  So as long as our imprint survives it will never be out of print again.  It is the first in what we plan to be an exemplary series of reprints of classic modern Australian poetry.

We welcome suggestions of other hard-to-obtain classic collections which deserve revival in this way.

Watch this space for news of John Foulcher’s forthcoming new collection The Sunset Assumption which will be published by Pitt Street Poetry in July.